Nvidia getting more serious about gaming on Linux and Arm: hiring engineer to work on 'native-speed x86-64 gaming on Linux/ARM64 platforms'

Two RTX 5060 Ti graphics cards lined up next to an RTX 4060 Ti. — (Image credit: Future)

If you were a leading a tech company with big aspirations, you'd be looking into Linux and Arm right now. Nvidia certainly is. The company already has both in its product stack, namely the DGX Spark, which uses a custom Linux OS and off-the-shelf Arm cores. This chip is also set to launch as the N1X for consumers this year. However, there are promising signs that the graphics card manufacturer is looking into ways to use Linux and Arm for good—or rather, for gaming—in future.

Nvidia is currently hiring for a Linux Graphics Senior Software Engineer. The role is teed up as such:

"We are growing Nvidia and the Linux graphics driver team with the smartest people in the world. We're looking for outstanding software engineers to help us develop driver solutions for new GPUs on desktop, server and gaming Linux platforms; including our newest addition to the line-up: the ground-breaking DGX Spark. We collaborate with open-source frameworks like Vulkan and OpenGL, and we enable Linux games and apps to take advantage of Nvidia GPUs for both x86 and ARM architecture."

Seamlessly translating one architecture to another is a key step for gaming on non-Windows, non-x86 systems. There are two bridges required here: x86 to Arm and Windows to Linux. Nvidia isn't starting from scratch, however, as we're already benefactors of one of these in a popular product today, the Steam Deck. Proton, developed by Valve, already does a superb job of translating games made for Windows to work on Linux with no loss in performance.

There's also Fex and Box64. These are x86 emulators that run on Arm and Linux. There have also been tremendous strides in the development of these tools, including by Valve, who has been supporting Fex for a long while. Valve intends to use Fex to run x86 games on the Arm-powered Steam Frame VR headset. And I've tried it, and it works great, if a little slower than natively running a game on x86. Valve told me that it varies on a game-by-game basis. There's still work to be done here, then.

We're using Valve's new VR headset, the Steam Frame, at Valve's HQ in Bellevue, Washington. — Here I am playing an x86 game on an Arm-powered Steam Frame using FEX. (Image credit: Future)

Microsoft also has its own emulation software for x86, called Prism, which is tuned for use with Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors. We know those can struggle with game support, but essentially, there's interest from all over the industry to get the x86-Arm conversion sorted. Especially from Nvidia.

Nvidia is also hiring for a Senior Software Engineer, Graphics Performance to work on future Linux graphics drivers.

Further to both posts, Nvidia is seeking a Senior System Software Engineer, Vulkan Performance, to diagnose "GPU and CPU performance bottlenecks in Vulkan and Proton titles". Nvidia is already a big contributor for Vulkan, which is made by a cross-industry consortium called Khronos. Its members include Nvidia, Arm, AMD, Epic, Google, Intel, Qualcomm, Huawei, Valve, Sony, and on and on.

Across the three job postings, you get a pretty good idea of intent for the future of Nvidia's graphics drivers (traditionally, not Linux-friendly) and Arm-based systems. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as a hungry person once said, and a couple of job postings don't necessarily indicate the path of travel for a large company with tens of thousands of employees such as Nvidia. But it's a promising sign for Linux gamers nonetheless.

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Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating into breaking things professionally at PCGamesN. Now he's managing editor of the hardware team at PC Gamer, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC.

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