Initial HDMI 2.0 Support With Nouveau Slated For The Next Linux Kernel

Days after Nouveau DRM maintainer Ben Skeggs began staging changes for this open-source NVIDIA driver ahead of the next kernel cycle, this evening Ben Skeggs submitted the DRM-Next pull request to queue this work for the Linux 4.20/5.0 kernel cycle.

As covered in that previous article, there isn't a whole lot on the Nouveau kernel driver front at this time. Skeggs summed up these open-source NVIDIA driver changes as: "Just initial HDMI 2.0 support, and a bunch of other cleanups."

It was just recently that the Nouveau developers began figuring out the code for HDMI 2.0 support and this next version of the Linux kernel whether it be v4.20 or v5.0 will carry that initial support. But the HDMI 2.0 support isn't all that pressing when still the recent generations of NVIDIA GPUs can't re-clock under this driver to their rated clock frequencies, thus severely handicapping their performance and mostly making HDMI 2.0 support irrelevant. Of course, if using the proprietary NVIDIA driver has been the full performance potential as well as HDMI 2.0 display handling. But unfortunately the Nouveau driver remains largely handicapped itself from the lack of support by NVIDIA Corp and their signed firmware restrictions put in place since the GeForce 900 series.

The list of clean-ups and other patches for this next kernel cycle on the Nouveau front can be found via this pull request.