SUSE only maintains the latest NVIDIA Production Branch GPU drivers for SLES

This document (000021836) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15

Situation

Some SLES users have requested that SUSE provide and maintain NVIDIA’s Long Term Support Branch GPU drivers.

Resolution

NVIDIA maintains three different branches of GPU drivers, each with different characteristics that are evident from their names. These are:

GPU Branch Name	Characteristic	Support life
New Feature Branch	Newest features.	About 3 months
Production Branch	Qualified for production use	Up to 1 year
Long Term Support Branch	Long support life	3 years

See https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/tesla/drivers/#driver-lifecycle for additional details about these driver branches.

SUSE cannot maintain multiple branches of drivers in SLES, and has chosen to maintain the latest Production Branch drivers. This choice of the Production Branch seems to offer the best balance of features and support time. This driver is available here: https://download.nvidia.com/suse/

SLES users who need newer features than are offered in the latest NVIDIA GPU Production Branch Driver, should consider using the latest New Feature Branch driver.

SLES users who need longer support than is offered by the Production Branch, should consider using the current NVIDIA GPU Long Term Support Branch driver.

NVIDIA GPU drivers for Feature and Long Term Support branches are available from NVIDIA here: https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.