Thunderbolt 3 AltMode Driver & Other USB Improvements For Linux 6.14

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 28 January 2025 at 10:13 AM EST. Add A Comment
HARDWARE
In addition to sending out the char/misc pull request that completed work on the NTSYNC driver, Greg Kroah-Hartman yesterday also sent out the USB/Thunderbolt pull request for Linux 6.14. The USB/Thunderbolt updates include new hardware support, Chrome OS improvements, and other changes.

That USB pull brings the new Chrome OS UCSI driver talked about a few weeks ago for providing UCSI transport with Chromebooks featuring the ChromeOS embedded controller (EC) and supporting a USB-C Platform Policy Manager.

The pull also features additional Chrome OS work from Google and Intel for adding Thunderbolt and DisplayPort support to the "cros_ec_typec" driver. This is part of the alternate mode "AltMode" handling for the Chrome OS EC Type-C driver for both DisplayPort and Thunderbolt.

alt mode driver Kconfig


As part of that is also adding the new Thunderbolt 3 Alternate Mode driver. This driver from Intel supports the Thunderbolt 3 Alternate Mode entry flow per the USB Type-C 2.0 specifications.

Separately this pull request also brings improvements to Thunderbolt debugging with adding a write capability to the path configuration space via DebugFS, logging improvements, exposing the router DROM through DebugFS, and other work.

This USB pull request also brings enhancements to the F_TCM gadget driver, USB-serial device updates, and other changes.
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