Linux-Firmware Adds Signed NVIDIA Firmware Binaries For Turing's Type-C Controller

While we are still waiting on NVIDIA to publish the signed firmware images for Turing GPUs in order to bring-up 3D hardware acceleration on the GeForce RTX 2000 series graphics cards with the open-source Nouveau driver, today they did post the signed firmware image files for their Type-C controller found on these new GPUs.

With the Turing GPUs featuring a Type-C "VirtualLink" connector for use by next-generation VR headsets, NVIDIA has been working on exposing the Type-C connector support under Linux. With the Linux 4.20 kernel they added an I2C USB Type-C Turing driver to the mainline kernel. Yes, that connector driver is open-source though even this functionality requires NVIDIA-signed firmware files for support. Though that shouldn't be too surprising as since Maxwell, all their hardware blocks have been tightened down with the signed firmware requirement, which has greatly complicated the open-source driver support.

It's those firmware files that are now in the de facto Linux firmware tree. Three firmware binaries were added to the tree this morning by NVIDIA to enable the Cypress Type-C controller on these Turing TU10x graphics cards. (Cypress Semiconductor is behind several different Type-C controllers.) So with these firmware binaries plus a Linux 4.20+ kernel, their I2C_NVIDIA_GPU driver will presumably work with the latest Turing graphics cards.