NVIDIA Updates (Some) Public Documentation For Latest Maxwell GPUs

NVIDIA has updated some of their public specifications to help Nouveau developers in enabling support for their latest generation Maxwell hardware.

Andy Ritger of NVIDIA on Tuesday announced the release of the DCB 4.1 specification update. The video BIOS of the newer GM20x GPUs found with the GeForce GTX 900 series graphics cards use an updated version of the DCB (Device Control Block). The update is for the new GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 and GeForce GTX 980.

The Device Control Block is responsible for providing tables that describe the board topology and connections external to the graphics processor. The latest DCB information is available via NVIDIA's open-gpu-doc FTP area.

While some updated documentation may not seem like a big deal for open-source driver fans, it's of use to Nouveau developers as confirmed by Red Hat's Ben Skeggs and NVIDIA had also provided him with at least one recent GPU sample to help the desktop GPU bring-up on the Nouveau graphics driver.