Linux kernel 5.17 with better support for Ryzen CPUs is out

Linus Torvalds has released Linux kernel 5.17. The kernel has better support for RISC-V and AMD CPUs, among other things. Development was delayed by Specter-like CPU problems, but those have since been resolved.

In the new kernel There is a lot of support for Ryzen CPUs from AMD. For example, there is a new P-state driver that allows users of Zen 2 CPUs to better control the clock speeds per core, the kernel is pre-prepared for the arrival of Lpddr5 by reducing the workloads for it, and Smart Trace Buffer is now fully integrated. The kernel also has page table support for RISC-V CPUs, allowing them to support up to 64TB of physical memory. For AArch64 architecture, there is support for kernel concurrency sanitizer and the kernel gets a new random number generator, which is now based on Blake2.

The kernel version was initially supposed to be released a week earlier, but lead developer Torvalds wanted to fix a number of additional bugs first. It mainly concerned a number of Spectre-like cpu vulnerabilities of which no details are known yet, but which have taken time to repair.

Torvalds is now already working on the 5.18 kernel, for which he has already received several pull requests in recent days. Kernel 5.18 will be a bigger release, hopefully, which will “hopefully bring less drama.”