The Linux 7.3 kernel is expected to be released as stable later today and with that version there are many exciting changes and improvements. However, the Linux 7.4 kernel merge window will then open up and there are even more exciting changes expected to be merged for this follow-on kernel cycle. Here is a preview of some of the many exciting feature changes expected for Linux 7.4.
On the AMDGPU graphics driver side, AMDGPU finally enables HDMI 2.1 support by default! Now that the VRR and ALLM support is also in tow, the HDMI 2.1 support is in good shape for the AMDGPU kernel driver after those patches were finally open-sourced later in the year. With Linux 7.4 should be a nice AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 experience with modern Radeon graphics.
On the AMD iGPU side there is a very nice improvement with the AMD PerfOpt IOMMU feature. This AMD PerfOpt feature being enabled by default can yield big AI/LLM performance improvements for AMD iGPUs, including prior generation hardware too.
Linux 7.4 is also bringing more AMD Zen 6 support additions and improvements like the new BTB CTX isolation feature, AMD RMPOPT optimization, and AMD P-State driver improvements for Ryzen Zen 6 CPUs.
Linux 7.4 is also adding support for the NPU of the Ryzen AI Max 400 series (Gorgon Halo) with that device ID mistakenly missing from the AMDXDNA accelerator driver until now.
Over on the Intel side is preparations for Rugged Panther Lake and merging the Intel BFF driver. Intel also has a nice improvement on the graphics side for Battlemage of CPU binds and ULLS on the migration queue. The Intel graphics driver is also introducing a vRAM health check and degraded memory handling.
There also continues being a lot of work heading into the NVIDIA Nova driver.
Also exciting is Linux 7.4 upstreaming support for a few Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 laptops. More work there continues to materialize from Qualcomm.
On the Apple side, Linux 7.4 is slated to add initial Device Trees for the Apple M4 and the A18 Pro for the MacBook Neo. But as with the current Apple M3 upstream Linux kernel support, it's not yet usable for end-users. More enablement work is still happening for Apple M3 and newer before all the hardware functionality is wired up and working, but at least the mainline kernel can boot. Apple Silicon for Linux 7.4 is also seeing audio support going upstream.
Linux 7.4 is also expected to mainline support for the Google Tensor G5 SoC and Pixel 10 devices.
Linux 7.4 is also bringing other hardware improvements like a number of laptop and handheld gaming device improvements. There is also support for the Raspberry Pi 10-inch Touch Display 2 hardware.
On the file-system side, EXT4 is introducing an IOmap buffered I/O path for some nice performance gains. Large folios for FUSE is another performance item for file-systems in user-space.
Linux 7.4 is also expected to introduce Intel Instruction Timeout (Notify VM Exit) to address possible denial of service attack vectors within TDX VMs. Also on the virtualization side, Microsoft contributed a para-virtualized IOMMU Hyper-V driver for the Linux kernel.
Another virtualization addition for Linux 7.4 is the steal governor.
On the networking side is the new Nebula Matrix driver being upstreamed.
In the era of fuzzing bots is also a new kernel taint being introduced. Plus tons of other AI/LLM-driven patch activity.
On the code removal side, the Google C Binder driver is going away in favor of the Rust-based Binder driver.
There are also some exciting MM performance optimizations, opening single files much faster, a nice improvement to the Zstd in-kernel code, AVX-512 optimized xor_gen, patches beginning to land for significantly speeding up the kernel build time, and other changes to be further covered on Phoronix over the two week merge window for Linux 7.4.
Stay tuned for more coverage during the Linux 7.4 merge window and subsequent performance benchmarking at Phoronix. The stable Linux 7.4 kernel should be out right around the end of December.
Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.