With Linux 7.1, the focus will be more on improving and optimizing modern architectures.
Early Linux 7.1 Patches Reveal a Major Cleanup and Modern CPU Enablement, and Driver Improvements for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA Hardware
With the Linux 7.0 release, the merge window for Linux Kernel 7.1 has opened, and the new kernel is already getting readied through subsystem pull requests and feature-branch activity. The patches show that there will be another substantial update for the desktop and server users. While Linux 7.0 is just landing, developers are quickly moving toward the next merge window with changes that bring various optimizations for the CPUs, GPUs, and networking.
As reported by Phoronix, one of the most notable moves is the beginning of the removal of Intel i486 CPU support, which will mark the end of compatibility for the processor architecture that launched in 1989. It appears that maintaining support for such legacy hardware is no longer necessary, and the developer team is instead focusing on the modern CPU architecture.
As per the patches, Intel Panther Lake has got a boost with FRED enabled by default. FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) will improve the performance and security of the Panther Lake CPUs, and such changes indicate a promising roadmap for Intel CPU architectures. For AMD, the older GPUs have been fully transitioned to the AMDGPU driver stack. This started several months ago when patches were submitted to transition older GCN 1.0 and 1.1 GPUs to the AMDGPU driver stack. Such a transition brought nearly 30% improvement on older Radeon GPUs.
The new patches show that Linux 7.1 is also expected to switch several legacy AMD APU families, including Kaveri, Kabini, and Mullins, from the older Radeon driver to the AMDGPU driver stack by default. This will ensure out-of-the-box Vulkan support via RADV and should improve the graphics perfomrance and compatibility on older AMD hardware that is still widely used in embedded and budget systems.
Linux Kernel 7.1 Patches:
- Linux 7.1 is expected to begin removing Intel 486 CPU support for those old and obsolete but nostalgic relics.
- Enabling Intel FRED by default for better performance on new Intel Panther Lake CPUs.
- Raising the minimum required Rust version when building the Linux kernel with Rust programming language support.
- Retiring of the UDP-Lite code from the Linux networking subsystem and the resulting cleansed code should be faster for UDP than before.
- Lenovo Legion HID drivers are expected to be mainlined.
- Continued work on the NVIDIA Nova driver.
- Linux 7.1 will power off the system by default if a fatal ACPI error occurs.
- AMD Kaveri / Kabini / Mullins APUs will now default to using the AMDGPU driver rather than the legacy Radeon kernel graphcs driver. This means better performance for these old AMD APUs, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other improvements.
- A multi-SDMA engine optimization for AMDGPU with Linux 7.1.
- AMD continues preparing the graphics support for their next-gen hardware like more AMD GFX12.1 enablement.
- per-process memory usage queries for the AMDXDNA driver used by Ryzen AI NPUs.
- Power estimate reporting for Ryzen AI NPUs.
- New features for the AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling driver.
- Linux 7.1 KVM to expose AVX-512 BMM for guest VMs with AVX-512 BMM being a new ISA feature of upcoming AMD Zen 6 processors.
- FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE support as a new fsmount() flag.
- The Intel Xe driver is improving memory pressure and out-of-memory behavior for vRAM with the Linux 7.1 kernel.
- Enabling transparent hugepages for device pages with the Intel Xe driver as a big improvement for Shared Virtual Memory usage.
- Preparations for Intel Nova Lake P graphics.
- Intel's graphics driver is preparing for UHBR DP tunnels.
- Zstd offloading support for the Intel QAT driver for QuickAssist accelerators.
- A lot of Intel Xe3 graphics improvements for Linux 7.1.
- The Intel QAT driver is also preparing for the wireless mode support with QAT Gen6 hardware.
- A safeguard for Intel NPUs to avoid a single program exhausting all NPU resources.
- A small but useful debugging feature for AMD Zen systems.
- Many MediaTek MT76 WiFi driver improvements.
- A new Lenovo laptop fan driver is coming for better fan speed monitoring across different Lenovo laptop models.
- The Bitland WMI driver for enabling more functionality on laptops from this controversial Chinese ODM.
- More features on the mainline kernel for TUXEDO Computers laptops thanks to ongoing work to the Uniwill platform driver.
- More SpacemiT K3 RVA23 SoC enablement.
- HDMI display support for the RISC-V BeagleV Ahead SBC.
- There is also HDMI support for the Lichee Pi 4A RISC-V board.
- The RISC-V XIP kernel feature is being removed as it's recurringly broken for long periods of time.
- Improvements for the Adreno X2-85 GPU used by the Snapdragon X2 laptop SoCs.
- Adding a DRM dedicated CRTC background color property.
- Linux 7.1 is set to address an existing kernel limitation of around one battery per HID device maximum. Linux will now be able to support multiple batteries per HID device in better handling modern hardware.
- Sched_EXT is expected to prioritize SMT siblings for better performance and separately tighter control when tasks land on a CPU.
- Sensor monitoring for more ASUS desktop motherboards.
- Reducing the HRTICK timer overhead.
- Preparations for improved instruction-based sampling with AMD Zen 6 CPUs.
- New VeriSilicon DC8200 and Coreboot frame-buffer drivers via the DRM tree.
- Support for extended attributes on sockets for supporting new GNOME and systemd functionality.
- Sub-scheduler support for cgroup is looking like it will land for Linux 7.1.
About the author: Sarfraz Khan is a hardware reporter with a focus on PC components and the builder community. With years of experience writing about PC hardware and laptops, his work has been featured on several reputable technology publications. Sarfraz's hands-on experience is demonstrated through his first-person accounts of using and comparing different hardware configurations, providing practical and relatable insights for everyday users. His technical analysis is respected by peers in the enthusiast community and has been cited by specialized hardware sites such as Germany's Igor's Lab.
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