Open-Source NVIDIA "Nouveau" Driver Should Trip Less Often On Some GPUs With Linux 5.7

Written by Michael Larabel in Nouveau on 8 April 2020 at 07:17 AM EDT. 5 Comments
NOUVEAU
Last week there were a bunch of new improvements and features for the open-source kernel graphics/display drivers merged for Linux 5.7. There were not any feature changes on the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" driver front while this week at least are some fixes/workarounds so it's less buggy for some hardware.

A batch of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver fixes were sent in this week for the Linux 5.7 merge window closing in a few days. This includes a number of AMDGPU Fixes around Navi/GFX10, BACO, HDCP, and other areas plus a random assortment of other fixes. Plus this time at least there are some Nouveau fixes in tow.

Notable with the Nouveau fixes is a workaround for the run-time power management failing due to a still unknown issue between certain NVIDIA Pascal mobile GPUs paired with certain Intel chipsets. A reliable workaround is in place for this quite common "runtime PM" bug experienced by many Nouveau users. This fixes "a very annoying issue for user having to choose between a crashing kernel or higher power consumption of their Laptops."

Another workaround added to the Nouveau kernel driver is for Pascal GP107 / GP108 graphics processors. The GeForce 1030/1050 series with certain boards has a hang for unknown reasons during initialization of the GR block. The actual issue and a proper fix haven't been figured out but a reliable workaround has been determined to let these GP107 and GP108 graphics processors properly initialize without hangs.

The rest of the Nouveau fixes are fairly mundane, including a few SVM fixes contributed by NVIDIA. The complete list of fixes can be found via this pull request.
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

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.

Popular News This Week