Intel Alder Lake N Audio Support Queued Ahead Of Linux 5.17

Queued into the sound subsystem's "for-next" branch ahead of the Linux 5.17 cycle are some Alder Lake audio updates.

First up, another variant of Alder Lake P has been added to the hda_intel driver. Alder Lake P support was already in place but another PCI ID ended up being introduced (0x51cd). That's now present for Linux 5.17 and can be easily back-ported if warranted.

Meanwhile Alder Lake N is seeing its initial audio support appear for Linux 5.17. The Alder Lake N support is just adding a new PCI ID (0x54c8) and the rule to use the DSP-based Sound Open Firmware (SOF) driver or the plain intel_hda driver for other systems. No other changes for Alder Lake N support are necessary from the sound side.

Intel has also been preparing Alder Lake N graphics support and other kernel additions needed for ADL-N but amounting to non-intrusive changes over the maturing Alder Lake S and P series support. Intel's N-Series processors are for their low-power, low-performance Celeron/Pentium class hardware.

The Linux 5.17 merge window formally opens up in January while the stable kernel should be out around the end of March.