Linux 7.2: Cache-Aware Scheduler, Getting Ready for AMD Zen 6, and HDMI 2.1 FRL

Developers plan to ship the final release of the Linux 7.2 kernel on Sunday, August 16. It is precisely this kernel that Ubuntu 26.10 and a number of other forthcoming distributions will be built on, so Phoronix has gone ahead and gathered the most notable changes.

Scheduler and Performance

The star of this release is said to be Cache Aware Scheduling. On modern systems with several last-level cache (LLC) domains, it can noticeably boost performance for certain workloads. The optimizations also include an improvement to MGLRU that delivers a significant gain for MongoDB, as well as faster reads of /proc/filesystems.

AMD: Zen 6, Graphics, and Cameras

The kernel continues to prepare for AMD Zen 6 processors — they have already debuted in the EPYC 9006 “Venice” server series, and will soon make their way to desktop PCs and laptops. Some of the patches are still being finalized, but support for standard functionality in mainline has already been put in order.

For Radeon graphics cards, initial support for HDMI 2.1 FRL has been added, though it is disabled by default; other features of the HDMI 2.1 specification — VRR and ALLM — did not make it into this release. The AMDGPU driver has also gained a DC power management module that more accurately replicates the behavior of the cards under Linux. Worth a separate mention is the ISP4 driver: it enables the webcam in the HP ZBook Ultra G1a and other premium Ryzen laptops.

Intel and Apple

On the Intel side, there is initial support for the secured Panther Lake R SoC, groundwork for Diamond Rapids and Nova Lake H, as well as TDX updates. In addition, the kernel has learned to boot at a basic level on Apple M3 devices — for now this only means console output, while the M3 Pro/Max/Ultra variants will have to wait for Linux 7.3. There is still a long way to go before these (already two-year-old) Macs work comfortably on mainline.

What Was Removed

The kernel continues to shed the ancient: the drivers for monochrome Hercules ISA graphics and Profibus have been removed, the AF_ALG interface has been marked as deprecated, and ARCnet support for ISA and PCMCIA has been dropped. Part of this cleanup, as noted earlier, was prompted by the “noise” from AI agents digging through old code.

Source: Phoronix