Now that the Linux 6.16 kernel merge window closed this weekend, here is a convenient recap of all the interesting features coming in this next kernel release due out as stable around the end of July.
Among the many features introduced with Linux 6.16 include Intel preparations for Advanced Performance Extensions (APX), XFS atomic write support, a very nice EXT4 performance improvement, initial USB audio offloading support, the AMDKFD compute driver for ROCm can now be enabled on RISC-V hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell and Hopper GPU support with the open-source Nouveau driver, Kexec Handover “KHO” was merged as the basis for future additions, convenient reporting of hard/soft lock-up counts, Intel TDX host support for KVM, an Intel overclocking watchdog driver was merged, the OpenVPN DCO kernel driver was upstreamed for faster VPN performance, and there is even a fix for the old Macintosh II.
Continue on for a more detailed breakdown of all the interesting changes to find with Linux 6.16. Now that the merge window is over, onto kicking off more Linux 6.16 kernel benchmarking.
Processors:
– The X86_NATIVE_CPU build option to optimize your kernel for the locally installed CPU in setting the “-march=native” compiler flag.
– Multi-core scheduler support for LoongArch along with other kernel features now enabled.
– Support for the RISC-V SBI Firmware Features Extension and enabling some new SiFive vendor extensions and other enhancements.
– AMD SBI was merged for AMD’s Side-Band Interface / Advanced Platform Management Link (APML).
– A new AMD SPI driver.
– AMD ALLOWED_SEV_FEATURES support for KVM.
– AMD Requested CPU Min Frequency handling with the AMD P-State driver.
– AMD Virtual TPM Driver was merged for enhancing confidential computing with AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization.
– Upstream support for the EcoNet MIPS platforms.
– Statistics now exposed around NUMA task migration and swapping.
– Intel TDX host support for Trust Domain Extensions was merged for KVM virtualization.
– An Intel overclocking watchdog driver is introduced thanks to a Siemens engineer.
– Intel Energy Aware Scheduling for their P-State driver for better energy efficiency on Lunar Lake and upcoming Panther Lake SoCs.
– Intel Platform Temperature Control Interface (Intel PTC) thermal support.
– Intel SGX is less likely to cause fatal machine checks now with the latest code.
– Support for the Arm Scalable Matrix Extension (Arm SME).
– Support for 11 more SoCs as well as the RISC-V Sophgo SG2044 and enabling more Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptops on the mainline kernel.
– Faster AES-XTS on Intel and AMD AVX-512 CPUs.
– Dynamic preemption support for POWER CPUs.
– Expanded Intel hardware support in the EDAC drivers.
– Intel QAT GEN6 driver support ahead of next-generation processors with the updated QuickAssist Technology capabilities.
– Turbostat updates including support for Intel Diamond Rapids and Bartlett Lake processors.
– Intel Wildcat Lake audio support.
– Intel Auto Count Reload and enabling the Clearwater Forest PMU support for the perf events.
– Intel APX should be ready with the Linux 6.16 kernel for enabling user-space use of the Advanced Performance Extensions.
– Faster core offlining and scheduler improvements.
– Reporting the reason why your AMD Zen system was reset/rebooted.
– Reporting outdated Intel CPU microcode as a security vulnerability.
Graphics:
– Nouveau driver support for NVIDIA Blackwell and Hopper GPUs.
– Continued preparations for Intel Xe3 graphics that are initially debuting in integrated form on Panther Lake.
– Fan speed reporting with the Intel Xe driver.
– Intel Link Off Between Frames “LOBF” support.
– The AMDKFD compute driver can now be enabled on RISC-V systems.
– AMDGPU user queue support.
– Adding the Asahi user-space API header file for that future Apple SIlicon kernel graphics driver to be upstreamed in a later kernel.
– Many other open-source kernel graphics/display driver additions.
Linux Storage / File-Systems:
– New power code to freeze/thaw the file-system for system suspend and hibernate.
– More performance improvements for Btrfs.
– Performance improvements and more recovery work for the Bcachefs file-system.
– XFS atomic write support.
– EXT4 updates with a “really stupendous performance” improvement.
– Graceful host removal support for eMMC and SD cards.
– Block write streaps with NVMe Flexible Data Placement (FDP) is now supported.
– DMA-BUF zero copy receive support.
– Larger block I/O size support with the NFS server code.
– The NFS client code will now expose the LOCALIO state via sysfs.
– A performance improvement for FUSE.
– Various F2FS improvements.
– EROFS can now leverage Intel QAT accelerators for faster DEFLATE performance.
Linux Networking:
– The OpenVPN DCO driver was finally upstreamed for faster OpenVPN virtual private networking performance.
– Device Memory TCP transmit support.
– Removing the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol “DCCP” support that was unmaintained.
– Realtek RTL8127A 10GbE Ethernet controller support with the mainline kernel.
– Various networking performance improvements and new wired/wireless hardware support.
Other Hardware:
– Numerous Linux laptop driver improvements including the new Dasharo ACPI driver for those using that downstream of Coreboot.
– ByoWave Modular Proteus Controller Kit support was contributed by a Valve engineer.
– Support for the Apple Magic Mouse 2 USB-C model.
– Hardware monitoring support on more ASUS motherboards.
– New CSL RAS features.
– PCIe support for the Apple M2 Pro / Max / Ultra SoCs.
– Initial USB audio offloading support for Qualcomm hardware that has long been in the making.
– The GPIB drivers are readying to leave the staging area of the kernel hopefully for Linux 6.17. This is for the ~53 year old General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) that is still used by some test equipment.
– Some new media drivers were added to the media subsystem.
– Support for hardware-wrapped encryption keys.
General Kernel Improvements:
– Coredump socket support.
– Faster performance exiting user mode.
– Unifying the minimum compiler version requirement of GCC 8.
– Convenient reporting of hard/soft lockups and RCU stall counts.
– Sched_EXT CPU selection improvements made it into the mainline kernel.
– The ability to restrict GPL symbols to only select kernel modules.
– Various Rust programming language additions and various new Rust kernel abstractions.
– FUTEX2 improvements including support for task local hash maps and NUMA.
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