Nouveau News Archives


484 Nouveau open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Nouveau Supporting HDMI 2.1 Won't Hopefully Be Too Challenging Thanks To NVIDIA Firmware
Nouveau Supporting HDMI 2.1 Won't Hopefully Be Too Challenging Thanks To NVIDIA Firmware

While there is a lot of frustration from the news last week of the HDMI Forum rejecting AMD's open-source HDMI 2.1 driver support plans, the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" driver won't hopefully have too challenging of an experience in enabling HDMI 2.1 functionality since much of the display handling there is left up to NVIDIA's (closed-source) firmware binaries.

4 March 2024 - HDMI 2.1 Via NVIDIA Firmware Blobs - 76 Comments
NVK Vulkan Driver Lands Shader Object & Graphics Pipeline Library
NVK Vulkan Driver Lands Shader Object & Graphics Pipeline Library

The open-source NVIDIA "NVK" Vulkan driver within the Mesa codebase has merged support for the important VK_EXT_shader_object and VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library extensions. Additionally, as part of supporting these new extensions, this introduces the code for a common Vulkan runtime to Mesa.

28 February 2024 - Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan - 4 Comments
New Nouveau Patch Would Allow Optionally Enabling GSP Mode By Default
New Nouveau Patch Would Allow Optionally Enabling GSP Mode By Default

With the Nouveau driver support for using the NVIDIA GSP (GPU System Processor) that was added in Linux 6.7, that is only used by default on the GeForce RTX 40 "Ada" GPUs and moving forward where otherwise there is no accelerated support. The NVIDIA GSP is present in the GeForce RTX 20 "Turing" and RTX 30 "Ampere" hardware too, but not used by default unless setting a module option to enable the mode. However, a new patch is pending that would allow kernel builders to optionally enable the GSP mode by default.

14 February 2024 - Nouveau GSP Mode - 3 Comments
Mesa's NVK Vulkan Driver Lands A Pipeline Shader Cache
Mesa's NVK Vulkan Driver Lands A Pipeline Shader Cache

The latest notable feature addition for Mesa 24.0 worth mentioning is to NVK, the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver that works with the Nouveau DRM kernel driver for providing increasingly robust Vulkan API support on this alternative to NVIDIA's proprietary graphics driver.

9 January 2024 - NVK Pipeline Shader Cache - 5 Comments
Nouveau Receives Last Minute GSP Fixes For Linux 6.7
Nouveau Receives Last Minute GSP Fixes For Linux 6.7

Ahead of the Linux 6.7 kernel set to be released on Sunday, Red Hat's David Airlie has sent in some last minute fixes for the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" DRM kernel driver. These fixes are for addressing fallout from the NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware support merged for the v6.7 cycle.

5 January 2024 - Nouveau Fixes - 10 Comments
Open-Source NVIDIA "NVK" Driver Is Now Conformant For Vulkan 1.0
Open-Source NVIDIA "NVK" Driver Is Now Conformant For Vulkan 1.0

Mesa's NVK Vulkan driver atop the Nouveau DRM kernel driver is now officially Vulkan 1.0 conformant for passing all the necessary Vulkan 1.0 conformance test suite cases. Though don't get your hopes too high for this open-source NVIDIA Linux driver as the performance is still overall slow and the driver stack remains a work-in-progress, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

20 November 2023 - Vulkan 1.0 Conformant - 10 Comments
Nouveau NVIDIA GSP Firmware Support Merged For Linux 6.7
Nouveau NVIDIA GSP Firmware Support Merged For Linux 6.7

The first week of the Linux 6.7 merge window began with the surprise of the Bcachefs file-system being merged and now capping off the first week is another surprise... Nouveau GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware integration that allows making use of NVIDIA's binary GSP firmware on RTX 20 "Turing" and newer GPUs for having improved support. In turn this GSP route also provides initial support for GeForce RTX 40 series support.

5 November 2023 - Nouveau GSP - 56 Comments
Nouveau Patches Posted For Running On NVIDIA GSP-RM Firmware, Initial RTX 40 Ada Support
Nouveau Patches Posted For Running On NVIDIA GSP-RM Firmware, Initial RTX 40 Ada Support

The long-awaited patches for allowing the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" upstream Linux kernel driver to leverage NVIDIA's GPU System Processor "GSP" firmware for handling GPU re-clocking and other hardware tasks with RTX 20 GPUs and newer have been posted. With this set of 44 patches also comes the initial GPU hardware accelerated support for the GeForce RTX 40 "Ada Lovelace" GPUs that is built upon this new GSP driver code path.

18 September 2023 - Nouveau + NVIDIA GSP Firmware Blobs - 28 Comments
NVK Merge Request Opened For Landing Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan Driver In Mesa
NVK Merge Request Opened For Landing Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan Driver In Mesa

NVK as the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver being developed for Mesa has to this point been developed out-of-tree as it's been in its early stages, depends upon Nouveau DRM kernel driver improvements, and ultimately isn't too useful until the Nouveau GSP/re-clocking situation is sorted out upstream. But overnight the merge request was opened to introduce NVK to mainline Mesa.

26 July 2023 - NVK Merge Soon? - 38 Comments
Linux 6.4 Lands Fix For Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Use-After-Free Issue
Linux 6.4 Lands Fix For Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Use-After-Free Issue

As a follow-up to yesterday's article about the believed fix for the Nouveau use-after-free bug plaguing Linux 6.3 users of this open-source NVIDIA driver, the fix has now been merged to Linux 6.4 Git and in turn should also be picked up for an upcoming Linux 6.3 point release.

17 June 2023 - Nouveau Use-After-Free Fixed - 1 Comment
Nouveau Using The NVIDIA GSP Will Lead To More Firmware Bloat
Nouveau Using The NVIDIA GSP Will Lead To More Firmware Bloat

The upstream, open-source Nouveau DRM kernel driver working to make use of the NVIDIA GPU System Processor "GSP" will ideally lead to more punctual new hardware support, hopefully overcome the power management / re-clocking challenges that have plagued the driver for years with very low performance, and other current limitations. But it will also lead to more NVIDIA GPU firmware files in the linux-firmware tree and increased bloat.

19 April 2023 - NVIDIA GPU System Processor - 24 Comments
Nouveau Kernel Driver Patches Updated For Supporting Vulkan Features
Nouveau Kernel Driver Patches Updated For Supporting Vulkan Features

In addition to Nouveau developers at Red Hat working on NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP) support to ease their kernel driver development and ideally leading to quicker upstream hardware support and finally tackling power management / re-clocking for newer GPUs, another important area on the open-source kernel driver side has been about re-architecting certain interfaces to be able to better support features for the Vulkan API.

17 February 2023 - Nouveau VM_BIND UAPI + DRM GPUVA Manager - 3 Comments
Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan Driver "NVK" Begins Running Talos Principle... Slowly
Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan Driver "NVK" Begins Running Talos Principle... Slowly

The NVK open-source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA GPUs that has seen a lot of progress over the past year is now able to run some games like The Talos Principle, which was the launch title for Vulkan 1.0. While the NVK driver is correctly rendering, it's still slow until the kernel driver side is sorted out with re-clocking.

11 January 2023 - NVK Running Games - 36 Comments
NVK Vulkan Driver Starting Work On New Compiler
NVK Vulkan Driver Starting Work On New Compiler

The NVK open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver that was started earlier this year and has been progressing nicely the past few months is starting to see work now on its own shader compiler where as up to this point has been relying on existing Nouveau Mesa code for code generation.

8 November 2022 - NVK Compiler - 57 Comments
Nouveau Linux DRM Driver Making Progress On NVIDIA GSP Support
Nouveau Linux DRM Driver Making Progress On NVIDIA GSP Support

With the recent Linux 6.1 merge window there sadly weren't any Nouveau Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver improvements for getting the RTX 30 "Ampere" OpenGL support working yet with the mainline kernel even with RTX 40 series having launched. Needless to say, there also wasn't any progress on the re-clocking front for getting the GTX 900 series and later running in a performant manner on this open-source driver. But the Nouveau developers at Red Hat haven't simply been idling but rather have been working on the NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP) support for improving the RTX 20 "Turing" support and newer.

26 October 2022 - GPU System Processor - Add A Comment
NVIDIA GA103 Support Posted For Open-Source Nouveau Linux Driver
NVIDIA GA103 Support Posted For Open-Source Nouveau Linux Driver

Merged last year into the Linux kernel's Nouveau DRM driver was initial support for GeForce RTX 30 "Ampere" GPUs initially in the form of the GA100 and GA102 parts. That support for the moment is still limited to just mode-setting/display support with 3D still being tackled, but now a patch has been posted that rather trivially extends the support to cover the GA103 GPU too.

3 August 2022 - NVIDIA GA103 - 16 Comments
Open-Source NVIDIA "Nouveau" Driver Refactors Some Display Code For Linux 5.20
Open-Source NVIDIA "Nouveau" Driver Refactors Some Display Code For Linux 5.20

While AMD and Intel are busy with big graphics driver changes for each new version of the Linux kernel, the open-source NVIDIA "Novueau" kernel driver that is largely just worked on by Red Hat employees is just stumbling along. NVIDIA in May announced they are transitioning to an open-source kernel driver approach, but that current kernel driver is not in shape for upstreaming and due to the heavy use of the GPU System Processor (GSP) that source release hasn't been a huge help yet for the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver. With the upcoming Linux 5.20, Nouveau has some display patches.

27 July 2022 - Nouveau Display Code - 24 Comments
Open-Source NVIDIA "Nouveau" Driver Sees Few Changes For Linux 5.20
Open-Source NVIDIA "Nouveau" Driver Sees Few Changes For Linux 5.20

There hasn't been much to report on lately for the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver providing open-source NVIDIA GPU driver support on Linux. Several recent Linux kernel series haven't even seen any Nouveau DRM/KMS driver pull requests with changes. For the upcoming Linux 5.20 cycle, a Nouveau set of changes were sent in today to DRM-Next but it's quite tiny.

13 July 2022 - Nouveau For Linux 5.20 - 17 Comments
Nouveau Begins Shifting Around Code For Use By New Driver - Vulkan And/Or New Driver
Nouveau Begins Shifting Around Code For Use By New Driver - Vulkan And/Or New Driver

While the just talked about Nouveau beginning to land GeForce RTX 30 "Ampere" open-source support is exciting, as mentioned there still are hurdles to overcome for having good open-source NVIDIA driver performance on modern GPUs. So equally exciting news is that Nouveau has begun adapting some of their code into a standalone library so it can be used in the future by other new driver(s).

31 May 2022 - Nouveau Restructuring - 24 Comments
Nouveau Switches Over To NIR Backend By Default
Nouveau Switches Over To NIR Backend By Default

As part of Mesa preparing to drop its old GLSL to TGSI code path and routing more Mesa drivers through using the NIR intermediate representation, the Nouveau Gallium3D driver code has switched to using this modern IR by default.

30 April 2022 - Nouveau NIR - 4 Comments
Open-Source Driver Flips On OpenGL ES 3.1 For Select NVIDIA GeForce 200 Series GPUs

Sadly there isn't much to report on at this time around improved open-source "Nouveau" driver support for the recent GeForce RTX 20 and RTX 30 series while even the GTX 900 and GTX 1000 series graphics processors are in poor shape for this unofficial driver. But when it comes to the aging GeForce 200 series, select models there are finally seeing OpenGL ES 3.1 supported by this open-source driver.

7 June 2021 - GT21x - 19 Comments
Nouveau With Linux 5.12 Has ~5k L.O.C. Change In Preparing For Ampere
Nouveau With Linux 5.12 Has ~5k L.O.C. Change In Preparing For Ampere

With Linux 5.11 there is open-source Nouveau KMS support for Ampere GPUs -- just kernel mode-setting without any form of 3D acceleration. The actual hardware acceleration requires more work and also NVIDIA to release the necessary signed firmware binaries. With Linux 5.12 there still is no 3D acceleration but a big set of patches was merged as a step in that direction.

12 February 2021 - NVIDIA Ampere - 2 Comments
Open-Source "Nouveau" Driver Now Supports NVIDIA Ampere - But Without 3D Acceleration
Open-Source "Nouveau" Driver Now Supports NVIDIA Ampere - But Without 3D Acceleration

Patches were sent out today that provide the open-source Linux kernel "Nouveau" driver with support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series "Ampere" graphics cards. But at the moment there is no 3D acceleration and the developers are blocked still by signed firmware requirements, so it's basically just a matter of having kernel mode-setting display support.

14 January 2021 - Nouveau Ampere - 57 Comments
Nouveau NVC0 Shader Disk Cache Lands For Speeding Up Game Load Times

Covered back in February was work for Nouveau's NVC0 Gallium3D driver to finalle make use of the Mesa on-disk shader cache functionality for speeding up game load times by allowing previously compiled GLSL shaders to be cached to disk. That work by Red Hat has finally been mainlined in Mesa 20.3.

25 August 2020 - Mesa 20.3-devel - 8 Comments

484 Nouveau news articles published on Phoronix.