Open-Source NVIDIA Changes Sent In For Linux 5.12

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.