Linux 5.16-rc1 Released With Intel AMX, FUTEX2, Folios & A Lot More

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 14 November 2021 at 05:30 PM EST. 17 Comments
LINUX KERNEL
Linus Torvalds has released Linux 5.16-rc1 in moving past the exciting merge window and onto bug fixing for this next version of the Linux kernel.

Linux 5.16 is bringing a ton of exciting additions including memory folios being merged, DAMON memory reclamation, various file-system improvements, Intel Alder Lake S graphics, RISC-V hypervisor support for KVM, the Nintendo Switch controller, more Apple Silicon bring-up, Intel AMX support, cluster scheduling, various AMD hardware support additions, FUTEX2, and a hell of a lot more. Stay tuned for my lengthy Linux 5.16 feature overview article coming out in the morning.

Linux 5.16 is a super exciting kernel on the feature front and in turn will debut as stable around the very end of the calendar year or early January. Linux 5.16 is looking quite good so far though at least one notable performance regression to be fixed still during the RC series and then other bugs sure to come up now that more users/developers begin kicking the tires on this new kernel version.

Linux 5.16-rc1 was tagged a short time ago and continuing the "Trick or Treat" codename from the Linux 5.15 Halloween release.


Linus Torvalds commented in the 5.16-rc1 announcement, "I actually anticipated more problems during the merge window than we hit - I was traveling with a laptop for a few days early on in the merge window, and that's usually fairly painful. But - knock wood - it all worked out fine. Partly thanks to a lot of people sending in their pull requests fairly early, so that I could get a bit of a head start before travels."

Stay tuned for the Phoronix feature overview of Linux 5.16 and more kernel benchmarks to come.
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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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