Linux 6.4 Continues Bringing Up More Compute Express Link Feature Code

With the work led by Intel engineers on bringing up the Compute Express Link specification features into the open-source kernel, Linux 6.4 is another cycle seeing a lot of enablement work on the CXL front.

The Compute Express Link open standard is to play a vital role within upcoming server platforms with its new cache-coherent protocols around memory and device memory and numerous other interesting features supported by this four year old consortium's standard. Intel engineers continue doing much of the software work enabling the CXL support for Linux and for the current Linux 6.4 kernel have readied more feature code.

Linux 6.4 refactors CXL's Data Object Exchange (DOE) infrastructure so that it's a facility of the PCI core rather than CXL core. In turn this Data Object Exchange infrastructure work is being done in preparation for upcoming support around PCI device attestation and PCIe/CXL link encryption.

Linux 6.4 also adds support for retrieving and injecting poison for CXL memory expanders. There are also fixes for decoder enumeration and other CXL infrastructure work as part of this weekend's pull request.

More details on the CXL feature changes for Linux 6.4 can be found via Saturday's pull request.