NVIDIA Tegra Open-Source Graphics Driver Introducing New User-Space ABI

NVIDIA's Tegra DRM driver that is part of the mainline kernel will be introducing a new user-space API/ABI with Linux 5.15 that is designed for future hardware while also working for existing Tegra SoCs.

This brand new driver API/ABI for the Tegra DRM code is designed for more efficient usage with newer SoCs. NVIDIA has already published updated libdrm code and their VA-API driver to support utilizing this driver. The existing reverse-engineered "Grate" X.Org DDX and out-of-tree 3D drivers have also been adapted to use this new driver ABI.

This new Tegra DRM and Host1x interface has been worked on by NVIDIA since last year to replace their current user-space API that was considered to be "quite obsolete" and not working efficiently with their latest hardware.

This Tegra DRM interface can also integrate nicely with workflows around image processing and camera-GPU/CPU pipelines.

This new Tegra DRM interface was submitted via this pull request to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.15 merge window. This pull also includes display memory bandwidth management code and other improvements.