Steam is running as a VM on Tesla with GPU passed in

[kishkaru]

Tesla finally spilled the beans on how Steam is implemented...

Steam is running inside a Virtual Machine (VM) on the Tesla infotainment OS. The Steam client inside VM is based on the Linux source code for Valve's Steam Deck. Note they said VM, and not container. So I'm assuming there's a full blown guest OS running with it's own kernel.

The discrete GPU (Navi 23) is then passed into the VM for hardware 2D/3D acceleration. IOMMU?

This is probably why Model 3/Y Ryzen infotainment CPUs don't support Steam, as there is no separate discrete GPU to pass into the VM for graphics acceleration. The basic built-in GPU in the Ryzen APU likely can't be passed in as it's still needed for the host OS (Tesla infotainment). Without any GPU, the CPU virtualization of graphics performance is probably very poor due to the VM command translation and general virtualization overhead.

So there is probably very little hope for Model 3/Y Atom or Ryzen owners to access Steam. Unless Tesla decides to let us access the Steam VM with CPU virtualization, (which is unlikely).

The VM itself will be probably updated in each Tesla software update (similar to how Tesla native games get updated). The Steam client inside the VM will be updated regularly, as it's an isolated app running on the guest OS.

 

[wwu123]

Tesla finally spilled the beans on how Steam is implemented...

Steam is running inside a Virtual Machine (VM) on the Tesla infotainment OS. The Steam client inside VM is based on the Linux source code for Valve's Steam Deck. Note they said VM, and not container. So I'm assuming there's a full blown guest OS running with it's own kernel.

The discrete GPU (Navi 23) is then passed into the VM for hardware 2D/3D acceleration. IOMMU?

This is probably why Model 3/Y Ryzen infotainment CPUs don't support Steam, as there is no separate discrete GPU to pass into the VM for graphics acceleration. The basic built-in GPU in the Ryzen APU likely can't be passed in as it's still needed for the host OS (Tesla infotainment). Without any GPU, the CPU virtualization of graphics performance is probably very poor due to the VM command translation and general virtualization overhead.

So there is probably very little hope for Model 3/Y Atom or Ryzen owners to access Steam. Unless Tesla decides to let us access the Steam VM with CPU virtualization, (which is unlikely).

The VM itself will be probably updated in each Tesla software update (similar to how Tesla native games get updated). The Steam client inside the VM will be updated regularly, as it's an isolated app running on the guest OS.

Sure, maybe lack of a dGPU was the first reason to not offer it, but wouldn't be close to the last, right? Doesn't the Model 3/Y Ryzen only have 8GB of RAM, so just like the Model S/X with 8GB RAM + dGPU, they still wouldn't get it, because probably not enough RAM to allocate to the VM for overhead of the additional guest OS? Or even if they took it on the chin and ported the Steam to the native OS, along with all the associated challenges of software interoperability and software updates, maybe either the APU or the 8GB is still not enough performance, so they don't ship it, or worse ship it like the MCU1 web browser, where it's too slow to actually work?

It's just all in the overall category of the software getting more resource-hungry over time, and vendors choosing to only offer new features on their latest and greatest hardware versions.

 

[josahua]

Sure, maybe lack of a dGPU was the first reason to not offer it, but wouldn't be close to the last, right? Doesn't the Model 3/Y Ryzen only have 8GB of RAM, so just like the Model S/X with 8GB RAM + dGPU, they still wouldn't get it, because probably not enough RAM to allocate to the VM for overhead of the additional guest OS? Or even if they took it on the chin and ported the Steam to the native OS, along with all the associated challenges of software interoperability and software updates, maybe either the APU or the 8GB is still not enough performance, so they don't ship it, or worse ship it like the MCU1 web browser, where it's too slow to actually work?

It's just all in the overall category of the software getting more resource-hungry over time, and vendors choosing to only offer new features on their latest and greatest hardware versions.

Its pretty pitiful overall. First the 2021 early adopters of the Model S Palladium do not get the "in-car gaming on-par with today's newest consoles". Second, the 2022+ Model S/X do not get "PS-5 Level Performance". So nothing advertised at the release has been delivered. Why say you are going to do it if you are not? This is classic over-promise under-deliver 101 mistakes. Yes, I know the history but they can do better.

 

[Evee]

super crazy how many cars shipped with the dGPU that apparently will never be used because of the ram limitation on early 2021 cars..