Nouveau Open-Source NVIDIA Code Finally Starts Lining Up For Linux 4.7

We've already covered at length the many AMDGPU/Radeon changes, the usual Intel DRM churn, and the multiple new DRM drivers coming for Linux 4.7. Missing from our coverage has been the Nouveau driver, but that work is finally getting queued up for this next kernel version.

Only today the first batch of Nouveau updates have landed in DRM-Next for Linux 4.7. Ben Skeggs, the Nouveau DRM maintainer at Red Hat, explained, "Nothing too exciting here, there's a larger chunk of work that still needs more testing but not likely to get that done today - so - here's the rest of it. Assuming nothing else goes horribly wrong, I should be able to send the rest Monday if it isn't too late...."

The changes include improvements to power sensor support, initial work on GM108 support, fixes to GR initialization and microcode, and making use of topology information provided by the GPU. The GM108 is the original Maxwell mobile chip for notebooks.

Not part of this initial queue are Karol Herbst's "Boost" patches, but maybe that's what we'll see on Monday if we are lucky. Obviously not for Linux 4.7 are any Pascal support patches, for which Nouveau developers will be waiting (presumably months again) for NVIDIA to release the necessary signed microcode images for being able to provide hardware acceleration.