Linux 5.8 Feature Queue Has Multiple Performance Optimizations, Intel Rocket Lake, Other Hardware

If all goes well Linux 5.7 should reach stable this weekend and that in turn will mark the start of the Linux 5.8 merge window. With our monitoring of the various "-next" branches for weeks already, here is a look at some of what is on the table for this next version of the Linux kernel.

Among the changes slated for introduction with Linux 5.8 include:

- Linux 5.8 will optionally flush the L1d cache on context switching in the name of increased security.

- Better power-savings for some systems (those with PCIe to PCI-X/PCI bridges).

- Prepping for Compute Express Link.

- XSAVES supervisor states for future Intel CPU features.

- NVIDIA format modifiers support and other open-source Nouveau changes.

- More Intel Gen12 / Xe graphics work as well as Rocket Lake support and other bits.

- Intel Tiger Lake Thunderbolt/USB4 support.

- Better handling of critical thermal faults with Radeon GPUs.

- Soft recovery support for GFX10/Navi Radeon hardware.

- Runtime power management for the Lima DRM driver.

- Qualcomm Adreno 405 / 640 / 650 GPU support.

- AMDGPU TMZ support.

- The AMD Energy Driver is coming for providing energy reporting for Zen CPUs on Linux (at long last).

- AMD Renoir temperature monitoring support for those new Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors.

- The new kernel will begin using the TPAUSE instruction with new Intel CPUs.

- Intel ComboPHY support for Gateway SoCs.

- P-State driver improvements.

- Intel DPTF battery support was just queued this week into the Linux power management code.

- Auto-detection for SoundWire on newer Intel platforms.

- Support for POWER10 prefixed instructions.

- More Loongson improvements.

- MIPS Release 5 and other updated MIPS bits.

- Potentially the new READFILE syscall.

- Many MediaTek wireless driver improvements.

- New Marvell/Aquantia Atlantic A2 NIC support.

- Better performance with the Freescale Ethernet driver.

- A reboot quirk for old MacBooks.

- Faster FUSE write performance.

- Faster Linux Writecache performance for Intel Optane DCPMM systems.

- An emulated block size target for the Linux device mapper code.

- Inline encryption support within the multi-queue block code.

- Intel-owned Habana Labs is mainlining the Gaudi AI training accelerator code.

- Thunderbolt support for non-x86 kernels.

- Controlling for ThinkPad laptops with dual fans.

- RME Babyface Pro support.

Plus more so stay tuned to Phoronix with our original reporting. If all goes well the next two weeks will serve as the Linux 5.8 merge window followed by seven or eight weeks worth of release candidates and then Linux 5.8 stable should be out in August, in time for making it into the likes of Fedora 33 and Ubuntu 20.10.