Linux 5.19 Features Many Intel & AMD Improvements, New Hardware Preparations

Linux 5.19 is set to be released this weekend, so here is a reminder about some of the big ticket items to find in this summer 2022 kernel release.

As with most kernel cycles, Linux 5.19 is another big one. From Intel and AMD continuing to prepare for upcoming hardware support, a plethora of networking improvements, continued work on IO_uring, various optimizations, and other new features, Linux 5.19 is exciting with all the improvements in store.

After the Linux 5.19 merge window in early June I wrote a lengthy Linux 5.19 feature overview while for those short on time or needing a reminder, here is some of the top highlights for v5.19:

- LoongArch landed as the newest CPU architecture port. However, with Linux 5.19 it's not yet usable on real hardware due to some driver code not yet being mainlined. In any case LoongArch made it for Linux 5.19 to open up the door for the LoongArch support making it into Glibc next. But the Linux 5.19 architecture count remains the same due to Renesas H8/300 support being dropped.

- Continued preparations for AMD Zen 4 processors with new IBS extensions, PerfMonV2, and other improvements.

- Also exciting on the AMD side is AMD SEV-SNP support on the host side finally having been mainlined. Over on the Intel side, initial Intel TDX host support for Trust Domain Extensions also made it.

- Many Intel power management improvements like Alder Lake support within the Intel Idle driver, Sapphire Rapids out-of-band mode support for Intel P-State, and other changes.

- Continued work on bringing up next-generation AMD Radeon graphics cards, both for RDNA3 consumer graphics card and the AMD Instinct MI300 / GFX940 accelerator. This enablement work has continued for the Linux 5.20 cycle, so it's looking like from the outside perspective that it won't be until at least 5.20 before RDNA3 might be in good shape for Linux gamers, etc.

- Intel Raptor Lake P graphics support.

- Continued DG2/Alchemist enablement, including now exposing the compute support to user-space and adding the PCI IDs for motherboard-integrated (laptop) discrete graphics. With Linux 5.20 looks like the point where the Intel Arc Graphics desktop graphics cards will be in decent shape.

- Apple M1 NVMe controller support has been merged thanks to the work of the Asahi Linux project. The Apple eFuse driver was also merged.

- Zstd compressed firmware support.

- Some nice performance optimizations such as showcased on the AMD Ryzen HP Dev One.

Learn about these and other changes via the more extensive Linux 5.19 feature overview.