Sensor support for other Asus motherboards and Gigabyte or NZXT products
Asustek continues to enjoy increasing support for various sensors on many of its motherboards, and this will also apply to the Linux 6.3 kernel. It will add support for a number of other models with B650, B660 and X670 chipsets, that is, two for AMD platforms and one for Intel (numerically in the middle – where are the days when AMD and Intel denoted “it” completely differently).
Within the HWMON subsystem, updates will be added to improve Nuvoton NCT6775 I/O support by calling ASUS ACPI WMI directly, where, in addition, the current resource conflict with this method for boards containing the Nuvoton NCT6799D controller is resolved in the Linux 6.3 kernel. The list thus grows quite respectably with the following supported motherboards:
- Asus EX-B660M-V5 PRO D4
- Asus PRIME B650-PLUS
- Asus PRIME B650M-A
- Asus PRIME B650M-A AX
- Asus PRIME B650M-A II
- Asus PRIME B650M-A WIFI
- Asus PRIME B650M-A WIFI II
- Asus PRIME B660M D4
- Asus PRIME B660M-A WIFI D4
- Asus PRIME X670-P
- Asus PRIME X670-P WIFI
- Asus PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI
- Asus Pro B660M-C-D4
- Asus ProArt B660-CREATOR D4
- Asus ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI
- Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X670E EXTREME
- Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X670E GENE
- Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO
- Asus ROG MAXIMUS XIII EXTREME GLACIAL
- Asus ROG MAXIMUS Z690 EXTREME
- Asus ROG MAXIMUS Z690 EXTREME GLACIAL
- Asus ROG STRIX B650-A GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX B650E-E GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX B650E-I GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX B660 GAMING WIFI D4
- Asus ROG STRIX B660-F GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX B660-G GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX B660-I GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX X670E-A GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX X670E-F GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX X670E-I GAMING WIFI
- Asus ROG STRIX Z590-A GAMING WIFI II
- Asus ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4
- Asus TUF GAMING B650-PLUS
- Asus TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI
- Asus TUF GAMING B650M-PLUS
- Asus TUF GAMING B650M-PLUS WIFI
- Asus TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI
- Asus TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS
- Asus TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS WIFI
- Asus TUF GAMING Z590-PLUS WIFI
Phoronix further delivers, that Gigabyte will also improve, albeit more modestly, thanks to the support of the SuperIO chip ITE IT87952E, which is used by the now morally outdated, but still great Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Master board. There are also improvements in the form of the OneXPlayer driver (AYANEO AIR and AIR Pro devices) and support for other NZXT RGB & Fan controllers within the driver nzxt-smart2 for this manufacturer of water-cooling kits, etc. Of the less visible things, then v pull requestu for example, support for the Infineon TDA38640 voltage regulator.
LoongArch with KASLR support
Loongson developers have prepared an implementation of Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR) for Linux 6.3. For processors of the LoongArch architecture there will be more of this in the Linux 6.3 kernel, in addition to KASLR, kernel relocation, single kernel implementation for Kdump, support for hardware breakpoints/watchpoints, support for KProbes/KRetProbes and new support for some kernel self-tests are being prepared. At least in the area of KASLR, LoongArch is pulling behind other CPU Architectures that have been solving errors of this type for a long time. The details are available in pull request.
Reminder: AMD Auto IBRS and Zen 4
In the context of security fixes and mechanisms, let’s remind you that with the generation of 5nm AMD Zen 4 processors, i.e. the current Ryzen 7000s (and their corresponding EPYCs and, at the end of the year, up to 96-core Threadripers), a mechanism for the automatic solution of IBRS, i.e. Auto Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation, came as well. It was already discussed in connection with the current version of the Linux kernel 6.2, but things will also happen in Linux 6.3, where it is worth remembering Phoronix measurements from January of this year, where the measured increase in performance on the then development version of the kernel reached 2 to 9% depending on the type of task. Intel already has a similar functionality in the core called Enhanced IBRS (he started working on it already in 2018when Specter and Meltdown were discovered).
Podpora Thunderbolt / USB4 DisplayPort Bandwidth Allocation Mode
A few days ago, the great Greg Kroah-Hartman himself pushed USB/Thunderbolt support updates to kernel. In addition to the usual batch of patches addressing new devices, there is in particular a pull request bringing support for the so-called DisplayPort Bandwidth Allocation Mode in the Thunderbolt controller as part of its full compatibility with the USB interface, including this new feature in the latest USB4 generation. With this mode, the GPU driver can negotiate with Thunderbolt a dynamically changing throughput limit through the DisplayPort interface input.
In addition, support for USB Pro SoC NVidia Tegra 2/3/4, or Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin, USB 3.1 Gen1 hub VIA LAB VL817, USB 2.0 hub Genesys Logic GL852G.
