Linux 5.17 Features From New AMD P-State To Xilinx Drivers, Lots Of New Hardware

Storage / File-Systems:

- A big rewrite to the FS-Cache and CacheFiles code for network file-systems.

- Performance improvements for F2FS.

- Mostly smaller improvements to XFS though there is quicker mount times possible.

- EXT4 has transitioned to using the new Linux mount API and the common get/set label ioctls.

- Performance improvements for Btrfs.

- Per-file DAX option for FUSE.

- Continued I/O optimization work.

Other Hardware:

- The hang fix if ejecting a broken floppy disk.

- Nintendo GameCube / Wii / Wii U real-time clock driver has finally made it to mainline.

- New Xilinx drivers have been added for their FPGA hardware.

- A generic USB GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) driver with initial support for a Sierra XM1210 receiver.

- The Apple PCIe driver adds clock gating support as the latest on the Apple M1 enablement push.

- Synopsys USB DWC3 multi-stream transfer (MST) support.

- Cirrus CS35L41 HD audio codec driver is new and supporting it on some newer Lenovo ThinkPads.

- NVIDIA Spectrum 4 network ASIC support.

- AMD Rembrandt network support for on the SoC.

- Many Intel WiFi driver improvements.

- Intel Alder Lake N audio support.

- Improved power management for the Intel Titan Ridge Thunderbolt controllers.

General / Other Kernel Enhancements:

- The serial console driver has a possible ~25% performance improvement.

- Xen pvUSB support has finally been mainlined after the patches floating around for over a decade.

- debug.config to more easily spin a kernel build with all the useful debug features enabled.

- Folio improvements, building off what was introduced in 5.16.

- A real-time analysis tool has been added to help in uncovering real-time kernel issues.

- Several notable Linux network performance optimizations.

Linux Security:

- Page Table Check support for helping to fight memory corruption issues.

- x86 Straight Line Speculation mitigation support is added in conjunction with supported compilers.

- Random Number Generator improvements including moving off SHA1 and performance optimizations.