Linux 7.4-rc1 Released With Nice Performance Improvements, AMD Ryzen Zen 6 Preparations & AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 Default

Even with Linus Torvalds having been on holiday, Linux 7.4-rc1 is out today on-schedule for capping off the Linux 7.4 merge window. Linux 7.4 brings many exciting changes. With v4.7-rc1 out today on schedule without the possible week delay Linus Torvalds talked about in the v7.3 announcement, it still stands good chances of releasing before the end of December. With that, Linux 7.4 will likely end up being this year's Long Term Support (LTS) kernel version. That is assuming no frightening delays toward the end of the kernel cycle that would drag it out. As it stands now, if Linux 7.8 releases on time it will likely be here on 20 December. Among the many changes in Linux 7.4 is the new AMD PerfOpt feature for Radeon iGPUs to help enhance AI/LLM performance, AMD Ryzen Zen 6 support getting all squared away ahead of those next-gen client CPUs launching, a lot of laptop quirks/additions, AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 enabled by default, Intel IPU8 support for upcoming Nova Lake laptops, more Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 laptop enablement, optional buffered IOmap support for EXT4, basic Apple M4 support enablement albeit not yet ready for end-users, Google Tensor G5 SoC and Pixel 10 device support with the mainline kernel, faster kernel build times, and much more. In the next day or two I will be out with my usual feature overview to summarize all the interesting Linux 7.4 kernel features/changes, beyond my dozens of individual articles in recent weeks. This is a BIG kernel with the most commits ever during the merge window; AI is in large part driving that huge upward trajectory in commit/patch count. Stay tuned for the Linux 7.4 feature overview on Phoronix followed by Linux 7.4 kernel benchmarking getting underway.Update: Linus Torvalds is now out with his customary release announcement:"This is a *BIG* merge window. I think the reason is the by now obvious one, but I'm actually taking it as a good sign: I'm *much* happier with the flood of AI triggered work going into the merge window than it showing up mainly as extra fixes during the -rc period. So I'm hoping that this merge window being larger than usual is a sign that the AI fixes are becoming more part of the "normal development" than a flood of fixes that go into the whole stabilization phase. I think that's a much healthier model. But we'll see how the -rc's look. That said, a small part of the "this is a big merge window" may also be that people are expecting 7.4 to be the next LTS release, which is another independent reason why some releases tend larger than others. So it may not *just* be the flood of AI patches. Whatever the reason(s) for a big release, it's huge both in commits - almost 20k commits vs the more common ~15k - and as a diff. Although the diff is large partly for the other traditional reason: yet another AMD hardware register dump into huge headers. A full third of the patch is just AMD GPU register offsets and bit masks. We've been here before, and I'm sure we'll see it many times again in the future. Just ignore the noise."