Linux 7.2 is officially available. Linus Torvalds (photo) released the new kernel version after a relatively busy final week of development. Among other things, changes to GPU scheduling were rolled back at the last minute because they were causing problems.
Torvalds writes in his announcement that the last week once again yielded more changes than he would have liked. However, that was no reason for him to delay the release. According to him, such hectic weeks right before a new kernel version seem to be becoming the new normal.
This “New Normal” is partly due to the use of AI in Linux development, writes The Register. Torvalds previously said that, thanks to AI coding tools, developers can produce more code and thus submit more changes.
GPU changes reverted
Most notable are a few late reverts within DRM, Linux’s Direct Rendering Manager subsystem, which plays a key role in controlling graphics hardware. Changes to the scheduling were reverted after it became apparent that the code was not yet stable enough. According to Torvalds, reverting the changes is the correct approach in such cases. The developers can resubmit the changes later once the issues are resolved.
In addition to the DRM changes, the latest set of patches mainly contains minor fixes. These are primarily in drivers, while the network portion of the kernel also received a relatively large number of changes in the final week. Several corrections were also made to architecture-specific code and the core of the perf subsystem for performance analysis.
Improved scheduling for server chips
A key addition in Linux 7.2 is Cache Aware Scheduling. This allows the kernel to better account for data already present in the processor cache when dealing with multi-core processors. A core that has access to usable data in the cache can therefore be utilized sooner, reducing the need for additional memory access. This technique is relevant for AMD EPYC 5 and Intel Xeon 6 processors, among others.
Linux 7.2 also includes work to enable the kernel to run on Apple M3 systems. Preparations have also been made for future processors and other hardware from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.
With the release of Linux 7.2, attention immediately shifts to the next version. The merge window for Linux 7.3 opens on August 17. Upon the release of 7.2, Torvalds reported that he already had forty pull requests ready for that development cycle.