NVIDIA News Archives

At the X.Org Developer's Conference (XDC 2024) happening this week in Montreal, NVIDIA shared a road-map around their Wayland plans as well as encouraging Wayland compositors to target the Vulkan API.

The NVGRACE-GPU VFIO driver was introduced for handling Virtual Function I/O support with the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip so that the GPU device could be assigned to guests using KVM/QEMU and similar for virtualization. The NVGRACE-GPU driver is now being extended for supporting the forthcoming NVIDIA Grace Blackwell "GB" designs.

While open-source enthusiasts like to criticize NVIDIA for not maintaining upstream, in-tree kernel graphics driver support (though things have been changing there), for other areas of their vast hardware portfolio they are much better upstream Linux kernel citizens and often at the forefront of new driver innovations. One of the leading examples of that is around the NVIDIA Mellanox networking driver support. With Linux 6.12 they've landed a new feature that has been described as "a sign of things to come, I think we will see more of this in the next 10 years."

NVIDIA engineers have sent out an exciting set of Linux kernel patches for enabling NVIDIA vGPU software support for virtual GPU support among multiple virtual machines (VMs). In aiming for upstream-focused Linux support, this NVIDIA vGPU support is built around the adapted Nouveau driver with the code previously posted for splitting up the Nouveau/NVKM driver components.

OpenBMC as the Linux Foundation project backed by vendors like Intel / Microsoft / Google / Meta for an open-source BMC firmware stack continues to be a growing success. This alternative to long-used proprietary BMC software stacks continues to grow in popularity with AMD now using it on their reference motherboards and Supermicro being another notable user with some of their server platforms. Not entirely new but been meaning to write about it and NVIDIA talked more openly about it this week: NVIDIA is also a big supporter and user of OpenBMC for their high-end AI/HPC servers and BlueField DPU hardware.

Building off the prior NVIDIA 560 beta driver releases, the NVIDIA 560.35.03 stable Linux driver was released today for providing the latest official NVIDIA graphics/compute support for Linux systems.

There's a new release of NVIDIA's EGL-Wayland project for an EGL External Library Platform library implementing EGL on top of EGLDevice and EGLStream extensions. This week's NVIDIA EGL-Wayland 1.15 release is primarily centered on delivering Wayland explicit sync fixes.

Following last month's NVIDIA 560 Linux driver beta release where the open GPU kernel modules are used by default with Turing GPUs and newer, the NVIDIA 560.31.02 Linux driver has debuted today in stable form for the R560 series.

NVIDIA today released their first Linux beta driver in the new R560 driver release branch. Coming days after their NVIDIA 560 Windows driver, out this morning is the NVIDIA 560.28.03 beta Linux driver.

NVIDIA's EGL-Wayland library continues to be maintained as an EGLStream-based Wayland external platform library for client-side Wayland support to EGL atop EGLDevice/EGLStream.

It's been a wild two years since NVIDIA began publishing an open-source Linux GPU kernel driver for Turing GPUs and newer. With the latest NVIDIA 555 Linux driver series that open-source kernel driver support is in great shape and NVIDIA today is out with a lengthy blog post promoting it.

The NVIDIA 555.58 Linux driver has debuted this morning as the first stable version in the R555 driver series. The NVIDIA 555 Linux driver is the most exciting in recent times with offering Wayland explicit sync support, more stable Wayland support in general, and GSP firmware is now used by default on RTX 20 / Turing and newer GPUs where the GPU System Processor is present.

NVIDIA has upstreamed a patch to the GCC 15 compiler for adding the "-mcpu=grace" option to make it easier to target NVIDIA Grace AArch64 CPU cores from this open-source compiler.

A few weeks ago NVIDIA introduced their much anticipated R555 beta driver with NVIDIA 555.42.02 for Linux bringing Wayland explicit sync support, the GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware being used by default, and a variety of Wayland improvements. Today the NVIDIA 555.52.04 beta driver is out that offers additional fixes for the R555 series.

It's coming a week later than anticipated but the NVIDIA R555 Linux driver beta has been released! This is the NVIDIA proprietary Linux driver update that brings Wayland explicit sync support along with a host of other important improvements.

While we are all waiting for the NVIDIA R555 series Linux driver beta that is expected to debut as soon as next week based on prior information with Wayland improvements (explicit sync) and more, with the NVIDIA R560 series Linux driver successor is a very interesting change: NVIDIA is planning on defaulting to using their open-source GPU kernel driver by default for GeForce RTX 2000 "Turing" GPUs and newer.

NVIDIA today released RTX Remix v0.5 as the newest version of this software for remastering old/classic games with path tracing. RTX Remix builds off DXVK and leverages NVIDIA Omniverse and other tech from the green giant like DLSS to enhance older games.

If your interest didn't pique enough when the former Nouveau lead developer joined NVIDIA and sent out a big patch series for this originally-reverse-engineered, open-source NVIDIA kernel driver, here's another plot twist: another NVIDIA engineer opening a merge request adding to the Mesa NVK Vulkan driver.

NVIDIA today released their 550.54.14 driver, which is their first production-ready/stable driver version in the R550 series.

For going along with today's GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER graphics card launch (Linux review in the days ahead due to late arrival of my RTX 40 series hardware), NVIDIA has published their first R550 series Linux driver beta. The NVIDIA 550.40.07 Linux driver is now available with many bug fixes and a few new features.

As part of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series launch RTX Remix was announced for helping game modders remaster older game titles for RTX/ray-tracing. RTX Remix 0.1 debuted last April as the initial version of their software to provide path-tracing support for classic games. Out today is the latest work for helping to remaster classic games with the debut of RTX Remix 0.4.

Following the 2023 highlights for Intel and AMD on Linux, here's a look back at the most popular Linux-related NVIDIA news for the past calendar year.

Ahead of the US Thanksgiving holiday extended weekend, NVIDIA Linux engineers published their 545.29.06 Linux driver as the latest bug-fix release in the R545 series.

As mentioned last week, merged for the Linux 6.7 kernel is NVIDIA GSP firmware support in the Nouveau driver so that these NVIDIA firmware blobs can handle hardware initialization and power management related tasks. This support is optional right now for the GeForce RTX 20 / RTX 30 series hardware with Nouveau but necessary if wanting better performance via re-clocking the GPUs. The GSP firmware is a mandatory requirement for Nouveau with the NVIDIA RTX 40 GPUs and moving forward.

The NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver is an open-source independently-developed project that implements the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) atop NVIDIA's NVDEC interface so that software like Mozilla Firefox can enjoy video hardware acceleration on Linux using NVIDIA's proprietary driver.

Earlier this month NVIDIA published the R545 Linux driver beta while today it's been promoted to the stable series with the NVIDIA 545.29.02 Linux driver release.

NVIDIA today published their first R545 Linux driver beta series with a number of shiny new features.

NVIDIA's latest patches intended for the upstream Linux kernel are over on the networking side of the house with their Mellanox wares as they prepare 800Gb/s (XDR) support within the RDMA/InfiniBand code.

The Linux 6.6 modules infrastructure is changing to better protect against the illicit behavior of NVIDIA's proprietary kernel driver.

While we are waiting on NVIDIA to roll out a beta of their next post-R535 Linux driver release stream, available today is the NVIDIA 535.104.05 Linux driver as their latest in this production driver branch.

New (Windows) tools have been released that break the NVIDIA BIOS Signature Lock, the "security" functionality in use since the GeForce GTX 900 days around signed firmware/BIOS handling. This authentication mechanism is what in turn has led to the GeForce GTX 700 series still being the best supported series by the open-source Nouveau driver while the GTX 900 series and later have been crippled to their low boot clock speeds due to PMU/re-clocking restrictions. While Nouveau developers have been working on the GPU System Processor (GSP) approach for RTX 20 "Turing" GPUs and newer to workaround this limitation as NVIDIA's blessed path forward, the NVIDIA BIOS Signature Lock has now been broken by Windows modders.

NVIDIA today rolled out a new stable point release in their R535 series for Linux users to provide a handful of bug fixes.

While not too useful as limited to OpenGL-only and will perform extremely slowly until the NVIDIA GSP firmware support is sorted out for the Nouveau DRM kernel driver, merged today for Mesa 23.3-devel and marked for back-porting to Mesa 23.2 is initial NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 "Ada Lovelace" GPU support.

NVIDIA today published their latest stable point release in the R535 Linux driver series to fix a variety of outstanding issues.

NVIDIA CUDA 12.2 is out today and while it's just an update to the CUDA 12 series, it's actually quite an exciting release.

Following last month's NVIDIA 535 Linux driver beta that was launched at the end of May, NVIDIA has now released the 535.54.03 Linux driver as the first stable R535 driver in this new series.

Five years after NVIDIA launched their SHIELD "Thunderstrike" gaming controller, they've recently been working on upstreaming support for this controller -- and other possible NVIDIA Shield peripherals -- via a new Linux kernel driver. This new driver is now set to be merged for Linux 6.5.

It's still some ways away with the NVIDIA 535 driver series currently in beta but with the NVIDIA 545 Linux driver series to succeed that there will finally be support for Vulkan games/apps running via PRIME for GPU offloading under Wayland.

With yesterday's NVIDIA R535 Linux driver beta one of the unlisted changes with this driver update is revising the driver license around the firmware handling to make it more explicit around permitting the GPU System Processor (GSP) firmware binaries to make it easier for redistribution and use by the Nouveau open-source kernel driver.

NVIDIA has a nice treat to end out May for Linux users by publishing their first beta build in the R535 feature series.

NVIDIA today announced the GeForce RTX 4060 series consisting of the $399 RTX 4060 Ti 8GB while in July an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB version will come along with a $299 RTX 4060.

Last month NVIDIA published RTX-Remix v0.1 for bringing path tracing to classic games. Out today is RTX-Remix v0.2 with more improvements to this tech plus they have now open-sourced the RTX Runtime Bridge as well.

In addition to releasing the GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card today (unfortunately, no launch day Linux review, still waiting on hardware...), NVIDIA has released as open-source the RTX Remix software for helping to add path tracing support to classic games.

NVIDIA launched their SHIELD "Thunderstrike" gaming controller back in 2017 and now in 2023 they are working to upstream their HID driver support for it.

While last week NVIDIA promoted their 530 Linux driver series to stable, for those using the prior NVIDIA 525 series production branch a new point release was issued today that backports several fixes.

One month ago NVIDIA released the 530 series Linux driver beta while today it's been promoted to stable with the NVIDIA 530.41.03 driver release.

The open-source nvidia-vaapi-driver project is an independent effort implementing the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) atop of the NVDEC interface supported by NVIDIA's proprietary driver. This VA-API-on-NVDEC implementation allows for video acceleration within Firefox and other software only targeting this open API.

NVIDIA today released their first beta driver in the R530 driver series for Linux users.

NVIDIA just published to GitHub the DLSS Super Resolution SDK v3.1, their first software development kit update made public since last May when DLSS v2.4 was the latest and greatest.

NVIDIA on Friday released the v525.47.07 Linux driver beta with their latest Vulkan driver enhancements along with the NVIDIA 528.50 driver on the Windows side.