New x86 Platform Drivers Land In Linux 4.5, Including Telemetry For Apollo Lake

Coming with Linux 4.5 is an eventful x86 platform drivers update.

The x86 platform driver updates landed today in Linux Git and include a new Intel Telemetry platform device and driver, an Intel Telemetry core driver, an Intel P-Unit Mailbox IPC driver, a new Intel HID event driver for hot keys, and updates to the existing drivers.

The Intel Telemetry work is described by one of the Git commits as, "Intel PM Telemetry is a software mechanism via which various SoC PM and performance related parameters like PM counters, firmware trace verbosity, the status of different devices inside the SoC, etc. can be monitored and analyzed. The different samples that may be monitored can be configured at runtime via exported APIs."

This Telemetry work appears aimed for Apollo Lake, which is Intel's next-gen SoC successor to Braswell. Apollo Lake is based on Goldmont's 14nm architecture with Skylake derived graphics. Apollo Lake chips are expected to start shipping around the middle of the year.

7-Way Linux Laptop Comparison From Sandy Bridge To Broadwell

The new intel-hid driver is for supporting hotkeys on newer Intel laptops such as the Dell XPS 13 9350.

In the other x86 platform driver work is a new ASUS Wireless radio control driver, keyboard backlight improvements for ThinkPad/VAIO/Toshiba hardware, other hotkey fixes, an Apple GMUX fix, WWAN RFKill support for the Toshiba ACPI driver, and a variety of other changes.

Details on all of these x86 platform driver changes for the Linux 4.5 merge window can be found via this pull request that landed this evening into the Git code-base.