Nvidia Engineer Now Co-Maintainer of "Nova" Open-Source Rust GPU Driver

The NOVA-Core driver as the basis for a modern, Rust-written open-source NVIDIA GPU driver for the upstream Linux kernel and eventual successor to the reverse-engineered Nouveau DRM driver has a new co-maintainer.

The NOVA open-source modern NVIDIA GPU effort the past year and a half has been led by Red Hat. Red Hat engineer Danilo Krummrich has been the main NOVA-Core driver maintainer for the upstream kernel code that continues being built out piece-by-piece for the mainline tree.

Now joining Danilo Krummrich as a co-maintainer is a NVIDIA engineer, Alexandre Courbot. The name may ring a bell as he started out at NVIDIA back in 2011 working on Tegra graphics driver support for Linux. While leaving for Google in 2017, he returned back to NVIDIA this past February to resume work on Linux GPU drivers. More than a decade ago while at NVIDIA, Courbot was working on open-source Tegra driver code and also helped improve the relationship between NVIDIA and the Nouveau project. Courbot was one of the early open-source GPU driver promoters at NVIDIA before his time at Google and now back at NVIDIA. Since returning among his NVIDIA Linux GPU driver work has been contributing to NOVA.

Courbot has been posting new code for NOVA and has now stepped up to being a co-maintainer of the driver. Danilo Krummrich wrote in the patch adding Courbot as a co-maintainer:

"Alex has extensive experience with NVIDIA GPU support, is closely involved in nova-core development, and brings valuable Rust expertise.

In addition to his technical contributions, Alex is actively engaged with the broader community. He works closely with contributors and stakeholders to identify and solve issues, fosters collaboration, and helps ensure that the Nova driver evolves in alignment with the community.

I trust him to take a key role in making the Nova driver a successful upstream solution for NVIDIA GPUs in the Linux kernel."

That patch is now in DRM-Next for introduction in the Linux 6.17 kernel cycle. The NOVA driver code remains under active development and isn't ready yet for end-users but given NVIDIA's increasing involvement in this upstream-focused, open-source kernel driver exciting times are certainly ahead.