Open-Source NVIDIA Changes Sent In For Linux 5.12

Written by Michael Larabel in Nouveau on 29 January 2021 at 06:25 AM EST. 17 Comments
NOUVEAU
Following NVIDIA RTX 30 open-source mode-setting support in Linux 5.11, the batch of feature changes slated for the Linux 5.12 kernel have now been submitted to DRM-Next.

With the effective cut-off of new feature material for the next kernel cycle being generally at the "-rc6" stage, this weekend marks the last general opportunity to get new feature work into DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.11-rc6 release on Sunday. After that initial Ampere kernel mode-setting for Nouveau went in late for Linux 5.11, a new batch of changes were sent in today by Red Hat's Ben Skeggs who continues to oversee this open-source NVIDIA DRM/KMS driver.

For those hoping this next cycle was going to bring 3D acceleration or other improvements to the latest-generation NVIDIA Ampere GPUs, that is sadly not the case. Also, unfortunately, no re-clocking breakthroughs to talk about either for supporting the existing Maxwell / Pascal / Volta / Turing support by this open-source driver. So in 2021, the GeForce GTX 700 series and GTX 950 parts remain the best supported NVIDIA desktop GPUs by the Nouveau driver stack... Those are the latest that can be re-clocked (manually) for achieving their rated clock speeds in their highest performance state. But still the OpenCL bring-up is ongoing and there isn't yet any open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver. But we eagerly await to see ultimately what the open-source play is that is being pursued by Red Hat and NVIDIA.

As for what Nouveau brings for Linux 5.12, there are MMU fault recovery fixes for Turing, fixing of mDP (Mini DisplayPort) connectors being reported to user-space as eDP (Embedded DisplayPort), fixes for audio locking, and other general fixes. The list of these fixes can be found via this pull request of code heading to DRM-Next until next month's Linux 5.12 merge window.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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