Linux 5.11 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has released Linux 5.11 just in time for… “Valentine’s Day”:

Nothing unexpected or particularly scary happened this week, so here we are – with 5.11 tagged and pushed out.

In fact, it’s a smaller-than-average set of commits from rc7 to final, which makes me happy. And I already have several pull requests lined up for tomorrow, so we’re all set for the merge window to start.

But in the meantime – and yes, I know it’s Valentine’s Day here in the US – maybe give this release a good testing before you go back and play with development kernels. All right? Because I’m sure your SO will understand.

Linus

Last time around, Linux 5.10 was an LTS release that added EXT-4 performance enhancements, improved post-Spectre performance, as well as the enablement of BCM2711 (Raspberry Pi 4) display pipeline, among other many changes.

Some of the notable changes in Linux 5.11 include:

• Support for Intel’s software guard extensions (SGX)
• Intel Platform Monitoring Technology (PMT) is now supported in Linux 5.11. This is used to manage and collect telemetry about devices.
• Added support for AMD “Van Gogh” and “Dimgrey cavefish” graphics processors
• Support for MIPI Alliance I3C host controller interfaces

Linux 5.11 changelog for the Arm architecture

• The kernel address sanitizer (KASAN) now supports ARM32, and separately, can use 64-bit Arm memory tagging extension (part of the ARMv8.5 Extensions)  rather than software tagging and shadow memory.
• Allwinner
  • Allwiinner H6 – I2S driver
  • Allwinner A100 – DMA support
  • New Devices
    • Allwinner H3 – FriendlyELEC NanoPi R1 & ZeroPi SBCs
    • Allwinner S3 – Elimo Impetus SoM & Initium SBC
• Rockchip
  • New NAND controller driver for RK3308, RK2928, PX30, RV1108, and others
  • Defconfig – Enable LVDS driver by default
  • New boards – Kobol Helios64 open-source NAS appliance based on Rockchip RK3399, Engicam PX30.Core SoM based on Rockchip PX30 along with a few carrier boards
• Amlogic
  • Clock driver
    • Add MIPI DSI clks on Amlogic axg and g12 SoCs
    • Support modular builds of Amlogic clk drivers
    • Fix an Amlogic Video PLL clock dependency
• Samsung
  • Rework and updates to Samsung Exynos PCIe controller driver
  • Samsung SoC drivers changes for v5.11
    • Limit the big.LITTLE cpuidle driver to Peach-Pit/Pi Chromebooks only
      because these are the only platforms where the driver works properly.
    • Convert the Exynos CLKOUT driver to a full module which solves
      boot-probe ordering issues (e.g. if device nodes in DTS are moved).
      This also brings modularization and compile testing.
    • Do not use of_machine_is_compatible() in early CPU hotplug core. Full
      device tree walk causes “suspicious RCU usage” warnings.
    • Clear prefetch bits in default l2c_aux_val of L310 L2C – they are not
      needed.
    • Extend cpuidle support to P4 Note boards (Exynos4412).
    •  Mark PM functions of newly added clkout module as unused to silence
      !CONFIG_PM warnings.
    • Initialize ChipID driver later – in arch initcall.
    • Few minor cleanups in documentation and code.
  • Defconfig changes for Linux 5.11
    •  Enable sound driver for Midas (Exynos4412 based) boards.
    • Enable ax88796c Ethernet driver for Artik5 (Exynos3250) board.
    • Enable Atmel touchscreen and STMPE ADC drivers for P4 Note board.
    • Build Samsung Exynos EHCI as module, to match the setting for the PHY driver.
  • DTS ARM64 changes
    • Several cleanups, including aligning node names with dtschema.
    • Add WiFi/PCIe to TM2 boards (Exynos5433).
    • Correct restart and shutdown of Exynos7 boards, as part of Paweł
      Chmiel Exynos7420 mainlining effort.
  • DTS ARM changes
    • Many cleanups of DTS and alignments to dtschema.
    • Fix USB 3.0 ports on Odroid XU board: wrong roles assigned to two
      ports, missing supply to the USB over-current and VBUS control pins
      and finally missing pin configuration for these pins.
    • Switch Exynos5422 DMC driver to monitoring/polling mode, instead of
      using interrupts.
    •  Correct the usage of “opp-shared” properties which lead to disabling
      the bus frequency and voltage scaling.
    •  Enable Bluetooth on few Exynos4210 and Exynos4412 boards.
    •  Enable dual-role USB on Odroid U3+ board.
    •  Add Ethernet description in multiple Odroid DTS allowing also easy
      MAC address filling by bootloader.
    • Add Ethernet to Artik 5 (Exynos3250) board.
    •  Add interconnect properties to Exynos4412 to fix old Mixer issues.
  • New device – Exynos 4412 based Galaxy Note 10.1 (P4) tablet
• Qualcomm
  • Clock driver
    • New camera clks on Qualcomm SC7180 SoCs
    • New GCC and RPMh clks on Qualcomm SDX55 SoCs
    • New RPMh clks on Qualcomm SM8350 SoCs
    • New LPASS clks on Qualcomm SM8250 SoCs
    • Regression fixes for Lenovo Yoga touchpad and for interconnect configuration
    • Boot fixes for ‘LPASS’ clock configuration on two machines
  • DMA Engine – Qualcomm ADM and GPI driver
  • Pinctrl driver
    • Qualcomm SM8250 LPASS (Low Power Audio Subsystem) GPIO driver.
    • Subdrivers for Qualcomm MSM8953 subdriver, Qualcomm SDX55, and Qualcomm SDX55 PMIC
  • Qualcomm PCIe controller driver – Add SM8250 SoC support
  • Device tree updates
    • Support for SD card, WiFi, LED, touchscreen, touch key and
      fuel gauge to the Samsung Galaxy S5. Nexus 5 also gains fuel gauge support.
    • IPQ6016 gains support for the QPIC NAND controller.
  • ARM64 DTS updates for Linux 5.11
    • SM8250 – Enable USB controller and PHY, SDHCI controller and FastRPC, PRNG, RTC, as well as support for the SM8250 HDK board
    • SM8150 – Enable secondary USB controller and PHYs, WiFi, Coresight, last-level cache controller, as well as support for the SM8150 HDK board
    • Removed VDDCX and VDDMX for MSM8916, as regulators are now
      handled by the rpmpd driver for the devices controlling them.
    • MSM8992 gains USB and SDHCI support as well as an I2C controller and the associated RMI4 based touchscreen for the Lumia 950.
    • MSM8994 also gains USB and SDHCI support, as well as VADC and temp-alarm support.
    • SDM845 gains interconnect properties for a number of devices and the
      GENI wrappers gains iommu stream configuration, which means DMA
      operations on e.g. I2C now works. The Lenovo Yoga C630 finally has the
      SMMU enabled, a few fixes and the description of the eDP bridge and
      panel means that the laptop can now boot mainline with working display, GPU, WiFi and audio.
    • SC7180 gains a slew of smaller improvements and fixes.
  • New devices – Microsoft Lumia 950 XL based on Snapdragon 810, HDK855 and HDK865 Hardware development kits for Qualcomm sm8250 and sm8150, three new board variants of the “Trogdor” Chromebook (sc7180)
• MediaTek
  • Added Mediatek MT8192 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor for Chromebooks and tablets, plus reference design.
  • Added Mediatek MT6779 (Helio P90) high-end Cortex-A75/A55 phone chip, and reference board.
  • Added Mediatek MT8167 Cortex-A35 processor and corresponding “Pumpkin” single board computer
  • DMA engine for Mediatek MT8516 (apdma)
  • ASoC driver for Mediatek MT8192
  • Mediatek MT7621 PCIe PHY driver
• Other new Arm hardware platforms and SoCs
  • Broadcom – BCM4908 64-bit home router chip based on Broadcom’s own Brahma-B53 CPU; Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 high-end WiFi router based on this chip.
  • Marvell
    • Three new Mikrotik router variants based on Marvell Prestera 98DX3236
    • A reference board for the Marvell Armada 382
    • EspressoBIN Ultra Armada 3700 based board
    • IEI Puzzle-M801 rackmount network appliance based on Marvell Armada 8040
  • MStar – Infinity2M low-end IP camera chip based on a dual-core
    Cortex-A7 also known as the SigmaStar SSD202D; Honestar ssd201htv2 development kit.
  • Nuvoton – NPCM730 Cortex-A9 based Baseboard Management Controller
    (BMC) used in the Ampere Altra based “Fii Kudo” server and the Quanta GSJ
  • NVIDIA – Ouya Game Console based on Nvidia Tegra 3
  • NXP
    • 32-bit i.MX6/i.MX7 platforms: Protonic WD3 (tractor e-cockpit), Kamstrup OMNIA Flex Concentrator (smart grid platform), Van der Laan LANMCU (food storage), Altesco I6P (vehicle inspection stations), PHYTEC phyBOARD-Segin/phyCORE-i.MX6UL baseboard
    • LX2162AQDS reference platform for NXP Layerscape LX2162A (repackaged 16-core LX2160A)
    • A series of Kontron i.MX8M Mini baseboard/SoM versions
  • Renesas – New board variants of the Renesas based “Kingfisher” and “HiHope” reference boards
  • STMicro – DH electronics STM32MP157C DHCOM Pico-ITX carrier board for the already supported DHCOM module
  • Xilinx – Version 5 of the already supported Zynq Z-Turn MYIR Board

MIPS Changelog

• enable GCOV
• Rework setup of protection map
• Add support for more MSCC platforms
• Add sysfs boardinfo for Loongson64
• Enable KASLR for Loogson64
• Add reset controller for BCM63xx
• Cleanups and fixes

RISC-V changes in Linux 5.11

• Support for the contiguous memory allocator.
• Support for IRQ Time Accounting
• Support for stack tracing
• Support for strict /dev/mem
• Support for kernel section protection

You can check out a more detailed Linux 5.11 changelog here. It was generated with the command git log v5.10..v5.11-rc7 --stat. Alternatively, you should soon be able to read the changelog on KernelNewbies website.

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