> aren't you incentivized to open-source the drivers?
No, Not at all.
If we go all the way back to 3Dfx era, we have seen dozens of GPU ( or 2D/3D Graphics Accelerator before the term GPU was coined ) trying to compete in the PC space, 3D Labs, Matrox, PowerVR, Intel I740, S3, ATI, Nvidia, Rendition, ( These are on top of my head, sorry if I missed any of your favourite ). None of them had much problem with designing hardware, their maximum triangles, ( If I remember correctly it was one of the unit used to market graphics card before GFLOPS were used ) were all on par with each other. And some even exceed the current dominant players, but in the end they all failed.
Why? Because they cant get the drivers / software to optimise the use of their Hardware. They do not perform any where close to their potential in Tomb Raider or DOOM. There are huge amount of optimisation built up over the years. As Nvidia once said ( That was even before their huge bet on CUDA ), 60% of their engineers are Software.
To point where the I am going to say, the Driver IS the GPU. You are just paying the hardware to use it.
Don't feel old, I still remember doing Blitter stuff on Amiga, or how sad I was that the newly bought 3Dfx card wasn't compatible with my PCI version and had to exchange it for a Nvidia, hardly did I knew.
No, Not at all.
If we go all the way back to 3Dfx era, we have seen dozens of GPU ( or 2D/3D Graphics Accelerator before the term GPU was coined ) trying to compete in the PC space, 3D Labs, Matrox, PowerVR, Intel I740, S3, ATI, Nvidia, Rendition, ( These are on top of my head, sorry if I missed any of your favourite ). None of them had much problem with designing hardware, their maximum triangles, ( If I remember correctly it was one of the unit used to market graphics card before GFLOPS were used ) were all on par with each other. And some even exceed the current dominant players, but in the end they all failed.
Why? Because they cant get the drivers / software to optimise the use of their Hardware. They do not perform any where close to their potential in Tomb Raider or DOOM. There are huge amount of optimisation built up over the years. As Nvidia once said ( That was even before their huge bet on CUDA ), 60% of their engineers are Software.
To point where the I am going to say, the Driver IS the GPU. You are just paying the hardware to use it.
* And now I feel very old just typing this up. :/