NVIDIA's Rust-Based Nova Driver Gains New Capabilities in Linux 7.3

This week the DRM-Next branch received a set of changes tied to integrating the Rust language into the Linux kernel's graphics subsystem. They target the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window and touch both the core DRM infrastructure and two leading Rust drivers — Nova, for open support of NVIDIA graphics cards, and Tyr, for Arm Mali processors.

The Rust DRM Infrastructure

Active work on the DRM core continues. In particular, groundwork has been added around I/O, a SysMem back-end for shared system memory with mutable access, as well as the RegistrationData and RegistrationGuard mechanisms, which track resources bound to a device's lifetime.

Nova — Nouveau's Successor

Nova is being developed as a next-generation driver for open NVIDIA support and is regarded as a replacement for the long-running Nouveau project. This batch of changes brings a consolidation of the boot process for the GSP (GPU System Processor), added support for loading vGPU and the TLV firmware image format, and improvements to the code for NVIDIA's Hopper and Blackwell architectures. Various fixes and minor refinements are also included.

It is worth emphasizing that NVIDIA itself is investing heavily in this driver: the public mailing lists show that its engineers continue to make a notable contribution to the project. The author of the piece notes that during a summer visit to NVIDIA he received some intriguing answers from company representatives regarding Nova, though he never did get any official written comments. Even so, in his words, the driver's development is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Tyr for Arm Mali

In parallel, the Tyr driver for modern Arm Mali graphics processors is moving forward. In the new code for Linux 7.3 it gained improvements to firmware loading and to starting up the MCU microcontroller.

Source: Phoronix