Updated Linux Kernel Patches Posted For Bringing Up The Apple M1 SoC

Earlier this month Hector Martin and the Asahi Linux developers posted their initial Linux kernel patches for bringing up the Apple M1 ARM SoC platform for the mainline kernel with devices like the 2020 Mac Mini / MacBook Pro / MacBook Air devices. The second iteration of those Apple M1 Linux patches have now been posted.

Hector Martin continues working on the Apple M1 Linux support via crowdfunding with the ambitious goal of getting Linux running well on these modern ARM-powered Apple devices. Linux is already booting on Apple M1 hardware but will be quite a while before it's a polished, performant experience especially when it comes to accelerated graphics support on the M1.

With the "v2" patches there is continued work on the timers, DeviceTree changes, tentative support for guest timer FIQs in AIC, refactoring of the Samsung TTY driver for adding on the Apple support, and a number of other low-level code changes and cosmetic improvements.

The current focus of these Apple M1 SoC patches continue to be on UART, interrupts, SMP, a SimpleFB-based frame-buffer, and the DeviceTree configuration. Much more is still ahead over the months to come.

More details on these "v2" patches for the Apple M1 bring-up under Linux via this kernel mailing list series.