Kernel Configuration

The Linux kernel used in this release is based on 5.15 major revision. Additionally, an optional package with 5.10 based kernel (which has been the primary kernel in prior releases) is shipped as well to help with the transition (though it has undergone minimal QA). The 6.0.7 release is the last release to support K5.10 kernel.

NVIDIA Linux PDK and SDK packages use the Linux kernel with PREEMPT-RT patches applied and the images shipped with the package are with PREEMPT-RT patches applied.

PREEMPT-RT patches can be obtained here and are applied on top of the Linux kernel. Additionally, some patches added by NVIDIA to resolve specific issues are also included.

The PREEMPT-RT patch files are available in the kernel/rt-patches folder in the Linux source (provided as a package as part of the release).

The primary change included with PREEMPT-RT patches is to convert spinlocks to mutex to make it preemptable.

The benefit of using PREEMPT-RT patches includes enabling real-time capabilities and reducing system latency, which are critical for NVIDIA DRIVE^® OS based products.

There may be slight degradation in performance in some cases with the kernel with PREEMPT-RT patches compared to the kernel without PREEMPT-RT patches.

For more information on PREEMPT-RT, see the Linux Foundation documentation.