Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux
What happened
Linux on Nvidia RTX Spark laptops runs with GPU clock limited to about 780 MHz when plugged in, compared to roughly 2 GHz on Windows, because the firmware’s power table is encrypted and only the Windows driver can decrypt it. This limits inference speed to around 14 tokens per second on a 120 billion‑parameter model, versus 65 tokens per second on Windows or WSL. WSL remains the practical middle ground, using the Windows driver stack to keep full GPU boost while running Linux‑first AI tools.
Why it matters
The encrypted firmware prevents Linux from accessing the full GPU performance, making native Linux unsuitable for high‑throughput AI inference on these laptops unless Nvidia port the power management logic into its Linux driver.
Is this a big deal?
Get stories like this every morning
The day's AI news in plain English, in your inbox at 8:30 IST. Free.
More from NVIDIA
How AI Is Helping Care Teams Get Patients the Right Care, SoonerNVIDIA · 13 Nov 2026A New Dawn in the Cloud: ‘Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV’ Is Coming to GeForce NOWNVIDIA · 12 Nov 2026Nvidia Faced Pressure to Boost Its AI Backstop Before Huang ExitNVIDIA · 12 Nov 2026Top Chinese AI labs built their newest models on Nvidia's Blackwell chipsNVIDIA · 12 Nov 2026Washing dishes at Denny's to rockstar of AI, the rise and fall of Jensen HuangNVIDIA · 12 Nov 2026This page was collected from mindstudio.ai and summarised automatically by AIPulsee's pipeline. See how it runs.