Broadwell Audio, Better PM For Sound In Linux 3.14

The latest pull request for the Linux 3.14 kernel worth commenting on and discussing at Phoronix is the sound/audio updates for this next version of the Linux kernel. The sound updates for Linux 3.14 are quite exciting (though not nearly as exciting as a Linux-friendly multi-million dollar home entertainment system) and includes new hardware enablement, better power management, and other Linux sound driver improvements.

Takashi Iwai sent in the 3.14 feature pull for the sound subsystem on Tuesday morning per this mailing list message. Highlights of the sound improvements for this next major version of the Linux kernel include:

- Initial audio support for Intel's Broadwell, the 2014 successor to Haswell. We've seen various Broadwell bits land in Linux 3.13 for graphics, etc, but it looks like the Linux 3.14 kernel will end up being the baseline for decent "out of the box" Broadwell support.

- A parallel power management implementation and run-time power management improvements. The runtime power management improvements cover Intel's Panther Point and other chipsets. The parallel work is for suspend and resuming codecs in parallel.

- Several quirk updates for various USB audio devices.

- A new driver for the BCM2835 multimedia applications processor used in the Raspberry Pi.

- An overhaul of the DaVinci drivers.

- Many DMA updates.

- Compress offload API updates for supporting sample rates.

- Various other driver fixes and improvements.