A Prominent Linux Kernel Developer Re-Joins AMD

Those paying close attention to the Linux kernel development may have noticed a small change to how a key Linux developer is marking his kernel patches.

Since the start of December on Linux kernel patches, for those paying close attention, Borislav Petkov has added an " (AMD)" to his name and no longer using his SUSE email address. Petkov has returned to AMD.

For those not recognizing the name, Borislav Petkov was employed by AMD more than a decade ago at their former Operaring System Research Center in Germany. But sadly the OSRC shutdown in 2012 and those Linux developers lost their jobs at AMD during the turbulent times at the company. Petkov at the Operating System Research Center worked on AMD hardware enablement for Linux and other kernel improvements. He went on to work for SUSE and for the past decade has continued his significant upstream Linux kernel contributions -- including still working on a lot of the AMD-related Linux kernel code.

He oversees a lot of important AMD Linux kernel. Per the maintainers file, Borislav Petkov serves as a maintainer for the kernel's EDAC core, RAS, x86/x86_64 architecture, x86 MCE, x86 microcode, and as a reviewer for the ACPI APEI code, He has been one of the most important Linux kernel developers concerning AMD processor support over the years.

Over the past month with the AMD hat, he's continued working on new code as well as testing and reviewing other AMD related code for the kernel.

It's great seeing AMD continuing to ramp up their Linux efforts over the past few years with more Linux engineers being hired. They have been hiring from client to server positions. With the wins around the Steam Deck, Tesla In-Vehicle Infotainment systems, Linux on laptops taking more interest, etc, they have really made a noticeable improvement on the AMD Linux client side with seeing many Linux enhancements benefiting Ryzen platforms from better suspend-to-idle handling, all the AMD P-State driver work, more timely CPU temperature sensor support, and a lot more that I've written about across dozens (or even hundreds) of articles in recent times. And then less of a surprise is, of course, more Linux investments on the server side with the success of EPYC in the data center. Traditionally AMD has trailed behind Intel when it comes to the number of Linux kernel developers it employs and their contributions to the upstream kernel and related open-source projects.

Here's to looking forward to many more AMD-led improvements to the Linux kernel in 2023.