Nvidia Driver Lifecycle: End Of Life And Support Status
Last updated on November 3, 2023
NVIDIA is a manufacturer that produces Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and other hardware for graphical and other processing needs. It also provides support and drivers for its hardware to make it compatible with different operating systems including Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, etc.
NVIDIA is considered to be one of the leading market enterprises to provide high-quality GPUs and support for both gamers and other professionals who require high computing power.
Support status guide
End of life (EOL) is the end of a product’s useful life. When a product reaches the end of its life cycle, the manufacturer no longer supports it. The following table explains the different phases of a product’s lifecycle. Testing status is when the product is initially released and EOL is when product support is no longer offered. The time between these two points is the support timeframe.
Testing
The software is not yet publicly available. It is in testing phase i.e., alpha, beta, release preview etc.
Active
The software is actively supported by the vendor.
Phasing Out
The software will soon reach its end of life. You need to look for upgrade or migration options. The software will automatically go into phasing out status 2 months before end of life.
End Of Life
The software is no longer supported by the vendor. You need to make sure your system and environment are safe.
Version
Released
Active Support
Security Support
NVIDIA releases different types of graphics drivers, like Studio or Game Ready drivers. Other than those, it also uses different release channels so that the end users can choose from the kind of support they require. While one channel offers a newer version every few days, the other channel offers an update only once a year.
There are 4 release channels offered by Nvidia, which are as follows:
- DRV: Regular driver release branch
- NFB: New feature branch
- PB: Production branch
- LTSB: Long-term support branch
The NVIDIA drivers downloaded through each of these branches offer different support cadences. The table below elaborates the details for each of the release branches:
| New Feature Branch (NFB) | Production Branch (PB) | Long Term Support Branch (LTSB) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target consumers | Early adopters who want to evaluate new features | Use in production for enterprise/datacenter GPUs | Use in production for enterprise/datacenter GPUs and for customers looking for a longer cycle of support. |
| Major Release Cadence | At least once every 3 months | Twice a year. | At least once per hardware architecture. |
| Length of support | N/A | 1 year | 3 years |
| Minor release (bug updates and critical security updates) | N/A | Yes. Quarterly bug and security releases for 1 year. | Yes. Quarterly bug and security releases for 1 year. |
Moreover, the NVIDIA drivers no longer support 32-bit operating systems outside the R390 release branch.
Additionally, the Kepler architecture devices are now only supported through the R470 release branch., whereas the Fermi devices were supported through the R390 branch, but are no longer.
On top of all this, the Linux and Windows operating systems have different release channels that divide into all the channels that we have already discussed. This automatically doubles the release channels.
That being said, the DRV channel does not have a support cadence since every bug fix and issue is addressed through further minor or major updates.
EOLs
