Nouveau: Accelerated Open Source driver for nVidia cards

The nouveau project aims to build high-quality, free/libre software drivers for nVidia cards. “Nouveau” [nuvo] is the French word for “new”. Nouveau is composed of a Linux kernel KMS driver (nouveau), Gallium3D drivers in Mesa, and the Xorg DDX (xf86-video-nouveau). The kernel components have also been ported to NetBSD.

Current Status

• 2D/3D acceleration supported on all GPUs (except for GA10x); see FeatureMatrix for details.
• Video decoding acceleration supported on most pre-Maxwell cards; see VideoAcceleration for details.
• Support for manual performance level selection (also known as "reclocking") on GM10x Maxwell, Kepler and Tesla G94-GT218 GPUs. Available in /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/pstate
• Little hope of reclocking becoming available for GM20x and newer GPUs as firmware now needs to be signed by NVIDIA to have the necessary access.

News

• Jan, 2021: GA10x kernel mode setting support merged in Linux 5.11.
• Jan, 2019: TU10x acceleration support (with redistributable signed firmware) merged in Linux 5.6.
• Jan, 2019: Support for Turing merged into Linux 5.0.
• Nov, 2018: Support for HDMI 2.0 high-speed clocks merged into Linux 4.20 (GM200+ hardware only).
• Aug, 2018: Support for Volta merged into Linux 4.19.