Along with getting the NVIDIA GSP fully booted and initialized for Ampere GPUs with the Nova driver code coming to Linux 6.19, this next kernel version is also beginning to make preparations for eyeing next-generation NVIDIA GPU support on this open-source driver.
As I wrote about back in October, NVIDIA engineers have begun making Nova driver preparations for next-gen GPUs. In particular, the first step of plumbing “Boot42” support for hardware initialization as a new requirement for post-Blackwell GPUs.
That Boot42 support is now queued in the DRM-Next tree ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window opening in early December. This doesn’t make the NVIDIA Rubin GPU support suddenly all start working nicely but is a step in that direction of next-gen GPU support. Nice to see it happening early and hopefully is an indication of NVIDIA planning to contribute more punctual new hardware support to the open-source Nova driver moving forward. At the same time the Nova driver isn’t ready yet for end-users with prior generation GPU support still being brought up and not yet as full-featured as the existing Nouveau open-source driver.
A nice step in the right direction for open-source driver support from NVIDIA.
Another small but worthwhile change for Linux 6.19 is also providing clear error reports when the Nova driver hits an unsupported GPU.
