Changes That You Won't Find In Linux 4.13

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 14 July 2017 at 07:17 AM EDT. 20 Comments
LINUX KERNEL
The Linux 4.13 merge window is nearing the end and while there is a lot of new features/changes, there is some functionality that you won't find in this next version of the upstream Linux kernel.

Some of the work not merged for Linux 4.13 includes:

RISC-V - The RISC-V developers were hoping their kernel port would land for v4.13, but while it continues to be revised, it hasn't landed yet but is looking like it might for Linux 4.14 unless it ends up being accepted late for 4.13 since it's a new architecture.

Ryzen Thermal Monitoring - There still is no temperature monitoring support for Zen/Ryzen CPUs. While it seems like a simple feature, the support has yet to be introduced to the mainline kernel.

No Other Ryzen/Zen Special Commits - In case you were wondering, searching Zen/Ryzen/Epyc doesn't reveal any new special patches for Linux 4.13... Besides the temperature driver support, we weren't expecting anything specifically, unless hoping for some magical new CPU frequency scaling driver/governor work, etc.

BUS1 - BUS1 remains in development as the successor to KDBUS as an in-kernel IPC mechanism, but it hasn't yet landed. I haven't heard anything new from the upstream developers about when they think BUS1 might be ready for merging.

Heterogeneous Memory Management - We've been watching the HMM work for many months and Jerome Glisse has been trying to get it merged, but as of writing the big patch-set for Heterogeneous Memory Management has yet to be merged.

Bcachefs - While this file-system that morphed out of the Bcache code continues picking up new features, it has yet to be merged into the mainline kernel.

Reiser4 - When talking about file-systems... Nothing new to report on Reiser4 ambitions for mainline.

AMDGPU DC - While already communicated in multiple articles, AMDGPU's DC (formerly DAL) display code isn't being merged for Linux 4.13. This means no HDMI/DP audio for newer GPUs, no HDMI 2.0 support, no mainline FreeSync, etc. The other big blocker now is no Radeon Vega display support either from the mainline kernel until DC is merged in a future kernel release.

Nouveau Re-Clocking - Another GPU driver feature we've been waiting on... No magical re-clocking support yet for Maxwell or Pascal GPUs. For now when using the newer NVIDIA hardware with this open-source driver it means being stuck to your boot clock frequencies. Kepler re-clocking at least has been working out nicely with Nouveau but still needs to be done manually with no auto re-clocking support yet.

What else would you have liked to see in Linux 4.13? Share your thoughts with us in the forums.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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