Over the past year Intel has been working to prepare the Linux kernel for the end of the “Family 6” CPU era. There’s been a big rework to the Intel CPU model handling within the Linux kernel given that “Family 6” has been in use since the 1990s and moving forward Intel CPUs will appear in Family 19 like Diamond Rapids along with Family 18 as part of the new CPU identification. Thus a lot of Linux kernel checks need to be reconfigured for the multi-family Intel handling. With Linux 6.15 it looks like most of that will be finally wrapped up.
On the Linux kernel mailing list has been a patch series from Intel engineers for completing an audit of the Intel Family numbers handling and moving to their recent Vendor Family Model (VFM) handling to properly handle both existing Intel CPUs as well as future processors.
Intel’s Sohil Mehta had commented on the recent patch series:
“Mainstream Intel processors have been using Family 6 for a couple of decades. This series is an audit of all the arch/x86 Intel Family-model checks to get ready for the upcoming Family 18 and 19 models. It also converts the last reamaining Intel x86_model checks to VFM ones.”
Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar commented yesterday:
“I’ve applied the first 13 patches to tip:x86/cpu to help move this along. I fixed a handful of typos, but haven’t noticed any functional problems so far, so unless there’s problems in -next this might be OK for the merge window. (Famous last words.)”
As of this morning those patches were picked up by the x86/core branch. With them now being part of this tip/tip.git branch, they should be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.15 merge window barring any last minute issues from appearing or concerns raised by other kernel developers.
