Nouveau Driver Picking Up NVIDIA TU116 GPU Support For Linux 5.3

Building off the initial Turing mode-setting bits that were in place since Linux 5.0 and have continued stepping along to support newer variants on successive kernel releases, the Linux 5.3 kernel is slated to add support for the TU116 graphics processor.

Queued now within the Nouveau DRM development tree is the initial TU116 support, based largely on Nouveau's existing TU117 support. But as is the case for this open-source NVIDIA driver with any Turing GPU, at this point it's just display/mode-setting support but without any hardware acceleration. The open-source Turing GPU support is blocked from having any 3D support until NVIDIA releases the necessary signed firmware images but even when that happens it will likely be crippled like Maxwell/Pascal/Volta in being stuck to the boot clock frequencies with the inability to re-clock to the base/boost optimal clock frequencies until some other firmware PMU issues are hopefully sorted out in the not too distant future.

The NVIDIA TU116 is the graphics processor found in the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.

For at least lighting up the display when using the GTX 1660 Ti on this in-kernel DRM/KMS driver, the TU116 code is in place and should be part of the Linux 5.3 merge window next month.

Other new work in the tree includes enabling modern color management properties, various changes around planes, and other code improvements but sadly nothing on the re-clocking front.