Linux 7.1 sets the course for recent architectures with a major clean-up of the code and a modernization of the drivers. The first series of patches announce the end of support for very old platforms, notable gains on the graphics side at AMD and Intel, and developments on the network and virtualization. Users of both workstations and servers should benefit from concrete optimizations in this branch. Less common hardware is not forgotten, with additions for RISC-V and several hardware accelerators.
Major new features of Linux 7.1
With Linux 7.1, there will be more emphasis on improving and optimizing modern architectures.
First Linux 7.1 Patches Announce Big Cleanup, Enablement of Modern CPUs, and Driver Improvements for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA Hardware
With the release of Linux 7.0, the merge window for kernel 7.1 is open and integrations are moving forward via pull requests and feature branches. The fixes suggest a significant update for workstations and servers. While Linux 7.0 is just arriving, developers are heading into the next merge window with changes bringing various optimizations for CPUs, GPU and the network.
As Phoronix reports, one of the significant decisions is the start of the withdrawal of support for Intel i486 CPUs, which marks the end of compatibility with an architecture launched in 1989. Maintaining these heritage platforms is no longer considered useful, the team is focusing its efforts on current architectures.
According to the patches, Intel Panther Lake benefits from a boost with FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) enabled by default. FRED must improve performance and security on these CPUs, a sign of a solid roadmap for Intel architectures. On the AMD side, older GPUs switch entirely to the AMDGPU driver stack. The movement, started several months ago for GCN 1.0 and 1.1 GPUs, has already brought nearly 30% gains on old generation Radeon cards.
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The new patches also indicate that Linux 7.1 will default several legacy AMD APU families, including Kaveri, Kabini, and Mullins, from the legacy Radeon driver to the AMDGPU stack. Expected result: Vulkan support via RADV from installation and better graphics performance, with enhanced compatibility on AMD hardware still very present in embedded and entry-level applications.
Linux Kernel 7.1 Fixes:
- Start of withdrawal of support for Intel 486 CPUs, old and obsolete platforms.
- Enabled Intel FRED by default for better performance and increased security on new Intel Panther Lake CPUs.
- Raised the minimum Rust version required for kernel compilation with Rust support.
- Removed UDP-Lite code from the network subsystem, resulting in a faster UDP path.
- Lenovo Legion HID pillars integrated in amont.
- Continuing work on NVIDIA’s Nova driver.
- Automatic system shutdown by default in the event of a fatal ACPI error.
- AMD Kaveri, Kabini and Mullins APUs will now use AMDGPU by default instead of the legacy Radeon driver, with better performance, Vulkan RADV support out of the box and other improvements.
- Multi-SDMA optimization for AMDGPU in Linux 7.1.
- AMD is preparing support for its next generation of graphics, with more GFX12.1 enabled.
- Per-process memory usage queries for the AMDXDNA driver used by Ryzen AI NPUs.
- Consumption estimation report for Ryzen AI NPUs.
- New features for the AMD P-State frequency scaling driver.
- KVM will expose AVX-512 BMM to guest virtual machines, a new ISA feature of future AMD Zen 6 CPUs.
- Support for FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE as a new fsmount() flag.
- The Intel Xe driver improves the handling of memory pressure and OOM situations for vRAM.
- Activation of Transparent Huge Pages for device pages with the Intel Xe driver, big gain for SVM use.
- Preparations for Intel Nova Lake P graphics.
- The Intel graphics driver prepares for DP UHBR tunnels.
- Support for zstd offloading for the Intel QAT driver for QuickAssist accelerators.
- Many Intel Xe3 graphics improvements planned for Linux 7.1.
- The Intel QAT driver also prepares for wireless support with QAT Gen6 hardware.
- Guardrail for Intel NPUs to prevent a single program from exhausting all resources.
- Small useful debugging feature for AMD Zen systems.
- Many improvements for the MediaTek MT76 Wi-Fi driver.
- New fan driver for Lenovo laptops, with better tracking of speeds across different models.
- Bitland WMI driver to enable more features on laptops from this controversial Chinese ODM.
- More upstream features for TUXEDO Computers laptops thanks to continued work on the Uniwill platform driver.
- Expanding support for SpacemiT K3 RVA23 SoC.
- HDMI display support for the BeagleV Ahead RISC-V board.
- HDMI support also for the Lichee Pi 4A RISC-V board.
- Removal of RISC-V XIP kernel functionality, regularly broken over long periods of time.
- Improvements for the Adreno X2-85 GPU used by Snapdragon X2 portable SoCs.
- Added a dedicated DRM property to the CRTC background color.
- Fixed limit of approximately one battery per HID device. The kernel will now be able to manage multiple batteries per device, to better support modern hardware.
- Sched_EXT should prioritize SMT siblings for better performance and provide tighter control when assigning tasks to a CPU.
- Sensor monitoring for more ASUS desktop motherboards.
- Reduced HRTICK timer overhead.
- Preparations for enhanced instruction-driven sampling with AMD Zen 6 CPUs.
- New VeriSilicon DC8200 drivers and Coreboot frame-buffer via DRM tree.
- Support for extended attributes on sockets to enable new features in GNOME and systemd.
- Subscheduler support for cgroup is expected to arrive with Linux 7.1.
