AMD Gets Back To Working On Their "Jadeite" Platform For Linux In 2022

Somewhat surprisingly, AMD engineers have been working on some new Linux kernel patches for their aging Jadeite platform.

Jadeite? It didn't ring a bell for me at first either and not many search references in regards to AMD Jadeite... The Linux patches this week summed it up as "Jadeite(JD) platform is Stoney APU variant."

Stoney is several years old now and surprising to see AMD going back to working on this platform with new driver work as usually they are more focused on the much newer hardware... At first I was wondering if AMD was re-spinning Stoney Ridge APUs for some odd but new customer use-case, but Jadeite itself has been out since 2017. The only existing Jadeite reference I was able to find within the Linux kernel source tree was this AMD DRM patch from 2017 for updating YUV plane offsets and the patch noting that it was tested by booting on Jadeite.

AMD working on 600+ new lines of kernel code for improving their Jadeite platform on Linux.

This new AMD Jadeite work in 2022 is providing I2S MICSP support for audio under Linux with the ES8336 audio codec. The patches are indeed new and carrying just a 2022 copyright. The patches for enabling I2S MICSP with the ES8336 codec for just the Jadeite platform, not Stoney at large.

With these patches the new audio driver code can be enabled via the SND_SOC_AMD_ST_ES8336_MACH Kconfig build option. The patches under review don't outline AMD's motivation for finally working to improve Jadeite/Stoney Linux support in 2022. Not that we're complaining, but just not used to see AMD going back to tackle major new feature code for 5+ year old platforms given their still limited (but growing) open-source engineering resources / staff compared to the likes of Intel and with Jadeite being just an apparently niche offshoot of Stoney Ridge.