High Frobenius pushforwards generate the bounded derived category

Abstract This work concerns generators for the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves over a noetherian scheme X of prime characteristic. The main result is that when the Frobenius map on X is finite, for any compact generator G of $\mathsf {D}(X)$ the Frobenius pushforward $F ^e_*G$ generates the bounded derived category whenever $p^e$ is larger than the codepth of X , an invariant that is a measure of the singularity of X . The conclusion holds for all positive integers e when X is locally complete intersection. The question of when one can take $G=\mathcal {O}_X$ is also investigated. For smooth projective complete intersections it reduces to a question of generation of the Kuznetsov component.