A Look At What's On The Table For Linux 5.3 Features

With the Linux 5.2 kernel due to be released in a few weeks and that marking the opening of the Linux 5.3 merge window, here is a look at some of the likely features coming to this next version of the Linux kernel.

Based upon our close monitoring of the different "-next" Git branches of the Linux kernel and mailing lists, here is a look at what you're likely to see merged with Linux 5.3 in July. Linux 5.3 will then debut as stable in September.

- AMD Radeon RX 5700 "Navi" support is coming!

- Continued HMM work for AMDGPU as well as PowerPlay improvements.

- Adreno 540 support within MSM DRM.

- The Ingenic KMS driver is new in the DRM-Next tree.

- Nouveau Turing TU116 support.

- HDR support for the Intel graphics driver for use with Icelake and Geminilake hardware and newer.

- Better Intel performance with FSGSBASE.

- Icelake NNPI support as the Nervana Neural Network Processor for Inference.

- Official Zhaoxin x86 CPU processor support.

- Intel UMWAIT support.

- LZ4 in-place decompression for the EROFS read-only file-system.

- Better performance for case-insensitive EXT4 lookups.

- Possibly SMR/zoned device support for Btrfs and also for Btrfs there's been reworked locking code..

- Other Icelake bits.

- Wacom MobileStudio Pro support and Wacom Intuos Pro Small.

- There might be the long work-in-progress LOCKDOWN patches.

- /proc/pid/arch_status support for showing AVX-512 usage currently.

- ACRN guest hypervisor support.

- FEC support for Intel's ICE network driver.

- Preparations for EFI special purpose memory might be ready.

- 100GbE networking driver improvements.

Of course, there will be a lot more too, so stay tuned for our Linux 5.3 merge window coverage in July. What are you hoping to see or looking forward to the most with the Linux 5.3?