AMD Sensor Fusion Hub Driver Under Review A Sixth Time For Linux

While a lot of interesting changes are coming for the in-development Linux 5.9 kernel, sadly a long overdue change isn't going to make the merge window and that is the AMD Sensor Fusion Hub driver.

The AMD Sensor Fusion Hub is utilized by some AMD Zen laptops for accelerometer and gyroscopic sensors on the devices, akin to the Intel Sensor Hub (ISH) that has long been supported under Linux. While the Sensor Fusion Hub (SFH) is used by laptops going back to Zen 1 hardware, it was only earlier this year that the AMD SFH Linux driver was posted.

Since the driver posting at the start of the year, the AMD Sensor Fusion Hub driver has gone through multiple rounds of review though not yet pulled into the mainline kernel tree. This morning the sixth revision to these driver patches were posted.

With the AMD SFH Linux driver v6 there are various code clean-ups and other items pointed out in prior rounds of review. That previous v5 driver was posted back in May. The v6 kernel patches are now up on the kernel mailing list. Some minor items have already been pointed out by the kernel build test bot as well as an upstream developer on improving the Kconfig bits for the driver, but further review will likely take some time.

With already being half-way through the Linux 5.9 merge window, we're looking at Linux 5.10 as likely being the earliest the AMD SFH driver could finally land. Linux 5.10 in turn should be out around the start of the new year though not appear on the likes of Ubuntu until Ubuntu 21.04 next April. It's unfortunate this driver has taken so long to come but at least the AMD developers are still working on getting it mainlined for improving the AMD Zen Linux laptop support. Aside from the SFH driver lacking, Zen and especially Zen 2 laptops are in generally great shape on Linux.