Old x86 Platforms To Be Removed With Linux 3.15

While the Linux 3.15 kernel is introducing a large number of new features, it's also doing away with some old drivers and older x86 platforms.

When it comes to old x86 platforms set to be removed with the Linux 3.15 kernels, the platform support being chopped off include the SGI Visual Workstation, Sequent Computer Systems NUMAQ, IBM Summit/EXA, and IA32-based Unisys ES7000.

All of these x86 platform codes being removed are for ancient hardware that's very rare these days (if not impossible to find) and the upstream kernel maintainers are either unresponsive or agree to the support being removed. H. Peter Anvin laid out the old platform removal changes with this mailing list pull request.

In other Linux x86 changes not yet covered for 3.15 is the memory management changes, new x86 platform code, refined reboot logic, two cpu feature changes, x86 IOMMU updates, boot changes, and other changes that aren't too noteworthy or exciting to most Phoronix readers.