Linux 6.1 To Feature Faster Intel Memory Error Decoding

The Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) driver updates have been submitted and merged for the Linux 6.1 merge window of which there are a few notable additions on the Intel side.

For Intel hardware platforms making use of the "skx_common" EDAC driver code, decoding of hardware errors should happen quicker with Linux 6.1 and moving forward. Up to now the Intel EDAC driver has relied on the firmware decoder that makes use of ACPI methods for trying to figure out hardware errors. But using the driver's error decoder turns out to be much faster and will now be the preferred path moving forward. The driver decoder extracts information directly from the registers of memory controllers and MCA bank registers rather than the ACPI firmware queries.

The Intel EDAC code will try to first use the driver decoder and then fallback to the firmware decoder if necessary. Using the driver decoder is said to be much faster especially for frequent correctable memory errors.

Another notable Intel change is adding Skylake-S support to the ie31200 EDAC driver. It turns out the Skylake S support for the various motherboards supporting those CPUs with ECC memory were never wired up for the EDAC driver, but now it's finally here at the end of 2022.

There are also other smaller Intel EDAC driver updates as outlined in this pull request that has been merged for Linux 6.1.