A change queued in drm-misc-next for DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.18 kernel cycle later this year is promoting the Nouveau driver for open-source NVIDIA GPU support to be using the GSP firmware by default. This reflects the reality that using the NVIDIA GPU System Processor “GSP” firmware with Turing and Ampere GPUs should provide a better experience than the older firmware alternative with Nouveau.
The Nouveau driver beginning on the Linux 6.18 kernel will begin using the GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware by default but still have a fallback in place in case that firmware isn’t supported. The NVIDIA GSP firmware on RTX 20 GPUs and newer should provide the best experience with the Nouveau driver. Mel Henning explained with the patch dropping the “DRM_NOUVEAU_GSP_DEFAULT” option that was used up until now to control the default behavior:
“This option was originally introduced because the GSP code path was not well tested and we wanted to leave it up to distros which code path they shipped by default. By now though, the GSP path is probably better tested than the old firmware eg. Fedora ships GSP by default and we generally run CTS on GSP. We’ve always been GSP-only on Ada and later.
So, this path removes the option and effectively sets the option to always on. We still fall back to the old firmware if GSP is not found. This change only affects Turing and Ampere.
Users can still set nouveau.config=NvGspRm=0 on the kernel command line to force using the old firmware on Turing/Ampere.”
Firmware is required in any event with the GeForce GTX 900 series and newer while it’s with the RTX 20 series and later where there is the NVIDIA GSP. It’s just on the NVIDIA Turing and Ampere GPU generations where there is an alternative firmware option to using the GSP. This default change just reflects reality for the best experience on the open-source NVIDIA driver.
Also queued in drm-misc-next ahead of Linux 6.18 is adding a clear message to the kernel log when necessary firmware is missing: “Failed to load required firmware for device” rather than just showing the likes of “gsp ctor failed: -22“
