Encrypted Firmware Slows Nvidia DGX Spark Inference to 35% on Linux

1 reports archived1 independent sourcesupdated 11/4/2026, 16:46:29

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1 Sources Cross-Validated

Nvidia DGX Spark laptops suffer a ~65% drop in LLM inference speed on Linux due to encrypted power management firmware locking GPU clocks at 780 MHz, compared to over 2 GHz on Windows. No workaround exists until Nvidia releases the necessary logic for Linux drivers.

LATEST/Nvidia DGX Spark laptops suffer a ~65% drop in LLM inference speed on Linux due to encrypted power management firmware locking GPU clocks at 780 MHz, compared to over 2 GHz on Windows. No workaround exists until Nvidia releases the necessary logic for Linux drivers.

Hourly heat curve

3 fully observed hours

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16.2

Peak

17.018:00

24h change

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The line compares only sources observed throughout; gap hours are interpolated to keep the trend continuous.

Coverage timeline

Total 1 reports · Latest first

Hacker News AIT2Nov 4, 16:46·68 pts
Encrypted Firmware Slows Nvidia DGX Spark Inference to 35% on Linux
- GPU clocks are locked at 780 MHz on Linux, reducing inference speed for 120B models from 65 to 14 tokens/s.
- The bottleneck is an encrypted power table managed by the Windows-only Nvidia Platform Controllers and Framework.
- Full performance restoration requires Nvidia to expose this power management logic in Linux drivers.
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