First on Phoronix earlier this week was highlighting AMD making their first step toward Zen 6 CPU feature development for the Linux kernel with introducing a “ZEN6” feature flag and filling out the Family 1Ah models that will be attributed to those next-gen CPUs. That patch has now been merged for Linux 6.15 and will be found in tomorrow’s Linux 6.15-rc7 release.
This is just the basic, very first step toward enabling support for next-gen AMD Zen 6 processors. The X86_FEATURE_ZEN6 synthetic feature flag can be used by other Linux kernel code now that depends upon assumptions of being a Zen 6 processor. The patch alone doesn’t enable any new functionality or magically make the kernel ready for next year’s Zen 6 Ryzen and EPYC processors.
This X86_FEATURE_ZEN6 feature flag was merged today as part of the “x86/urgent” fixes for Linux 6.15. While not adding any new features/functionality for Linux 6.15, it was merged as part of the ongoing v6.15 cycle to make it easier for v6.16 and beyond rather than having to wait until the next merge window to land the feature flag in the event that any other new code from different branches (i.e. kernel subsystems) will end up depending upon this flag. Plus this rather trivial addition doesn’t risk regressing existing AMD Zen processor support.
Stay tuned to Phoronix to learn more about Zen 6 feature enablement for Linux and other open-source preparations for what is sure to be some exciting AMD Ryzen and EPYC products in 2026.
