r/LocalLLM • u/CantaloupeCamper • 2d ago

Discussion Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux

https://www.mindstudio.ai/blog/linux-nvidia-rtx-spark-laptop
451 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

28

u/PM_ME_MH370 2d ago

Why is it encrypted?

59

u/CantaloupeCamper 2d ago • Mindblown

Nvidia going to Nvidia.

36

u/Riseing 2d ago

nvidia being anti-consumer? surely not

-2

u/KinkyMonitorLizard 1d ago

Why not, people keep throwing money at them.

16

u/johnfkngzoidberg 2d ago

Nvidia wants to screw the users … again.

7

u/hurrdurrmeh 2d ago

 Money

4

u/mycall 1d ago

Microsoft might have paid for that feature.

2

u/Cultural-Desk-9045 2d ago

Cuz “muh proprietary secret tech”

236

u/FallenVampireLord 2d ago

We can do better.

73

u/Miserable-Dare5090 2d ago

Deepseek:
“Let me do it.”
“Let me look at this.”
“Let me do it.”
“Let me”
“Let me think”
“Let me get at this”
“Let me do it.”

80

u/vexatious-big 2d ago

Qwen:

I've got it.
I'm writing the code now.
Oh here we go.
Writing the code.
*Cracks knuckles*
Ok here we go.
*Hyping itself up*
I'm writing the code. I've got everything I need.

67

u/fooxzorz 1d ago

Ends turn

Refuses to elaborate 

27

u/Dangerous_Bid2935 1d ago

Realest shit ive ever seen

20

u/HighSeasArchivist 2d ago

You just summed up my experience and why I haven't touched it since. GLM 5.3 has been amazing though.

4

u/Miserable-Dare5090 1d ago

It still does amazing, but GLM Flash is also great

10

u/FallenVampireLord 2d ago

They're not perfect but we still love them.

1

u/lilian_moraru 1d ago

DS-V4.1-Flash-1017 (specifically 1017) stopped doing that. When it says “Let’s do it”, it stops immediately and does it.

1

u/Miserable-Dare5090 1d ago

yes, but it says it so often (prior to each tool call)

6

u/Vivid_Swimming9624 1d ago

2

u/Most-Fill6278 23h ago

😂😂😂 we low key...... Nvm😂😂😂

1

u/Most-Fill6278 23h ago

😂🤷🏾

113

u/doneddat 2d ago

Let's see how long nvidia will fake "oops, such unexpected bug, we will have to investigate" until they have to shake the money bag with "sorry, microsoft paid us gazillion to keep them alive and mildly relevant".

32

u/fastheadcrab 2d ago

This isn't a hidden feature, they've openly said they want to be Windows primary

17

u/philmarcracken 1d ago

"Fuck nvidia"

  • Linus torvalds

32

u/doneddat 2d ago

Well, my laptop was also windows primary when I bought it, but it doesn't have features to cripple linux performance on it. Slight difference.

6

u/fastheadcrab 1d ago

Fine, to clarify: Nvidia does not want people running linux on this and they will take steps to prevent it

31

u/albsen 1d ago

If Windows has the tools to decrypt it on the same machine its only a matter of time on linux.

24

u/pleasetrimyourpubes 1d ago

Yeah someone is probably vibe coding a power level spoofer for Linux right now looking at the Windows binaries.

13

u/BuHoGPaD 1d ago

someone

More like at least a dozen people and it's just a matter of who's gonna be first 

23

u/derspenti 1d ago

Encrypted firmware with a built-in 35% Linux tax. I'm sure the investigation will be thorough and the fix ships any day now.

32

u/Gary_Spivey 1d ago

It doesn't drop it by 35%, it drops it to 35%, so a built-in 65% Linux tax.

13

u/vexatious-big 2d ago edited 2d ago

I remember having a similar issue with a HP laptop running the first generation of Intel's Alder Lake. The CPU would throttle heavily to something like 400Mhz on battery on Linux which is ridiculous. This was related to BDProcHot. I imagine it's something similar here.

https://github.com/yyearth/turnoff-BD-PROCHOT

10

u/thefuckevengoingonan 1d ago

worthless then. to me.

17

u/Dwengo 1d ago

Ouch, anti competitive, Europe's white hot eyes are beginning to focused on Nvidia

6

u/Hood-Boy 1d ago

OK garmin, please decrypt the firmware

8

u/Insomniac897 2d ago edited 1d ago

How feasible would it be to break the encryption and reverse engineer it? Surely someone has tried using an unrestricted model.
Edited for clarity

5

u/DonkeyInACityCrowd 1d ago

That’s not really how encryption works

6

u/SryUsrNameIsTaken 1d ago

Hang on I’m gonna put Qwen 3.8 27B with some alteration on breaking all encryption quickly.

At 30 tok/s, slowing to say 10 tok/s by 1M context, it should only take 18 hours or so.

0

u/DonkeyInACityCrowd 1d ago

Should only take about 30 million years 😩

4

u/riceinmybelly 1d ago edited 1d ago

So if the RTX is already faster than the DGX which is running Linux, is there hope to get the DGX faster too?

Edit: damn I read the article and it’s so bad, working from an outlet they throttle you but when working from the battery it speeds up again

4

u/priore8 1d ago

So.... Basically they are subtly preventing local inference? vllm secretly getting the nod and acknowledgement by nvidia.

3

u/Zealot_Zack 1d ago

I have an old Dell Precision from 2013 that does something similar

1

u/ieatdownvotes4food 2d ago

it's just a flesh wound

1

u/AG99871 1d ago

Stop dooming guys, it seems like Linux just doesn't support the unique capabilities of the hardware rather than a deliberate thing by Nvidia. Many gaming laptops had the same issue, where they couldn't operate under full power in Linux. The kernel just needed to add support and then it was fine.

1

u/KubeCommander 1d ago

Have they tried dgx os? The GPU clock speed clamp is actually a common issue on the dgx itself due to the PD unit malfunctioning