Abstract:
A large number of SoC (system-on-chip) related patches have been incorporated into the Linux 7.4 kernel. This batch of code provides support for dozens of new motherboards and introduces many new SoCs, including the Apple M4 and the A18 Pro that appeared on the MacBook Neo. Google Tensor 5 has finally been officially added to the mainline kernel, along with the Pixel 10 series of devices; in addition, there is support for some yet-to-be-released Snapdragon chips, forming another part of this batch of merged content.
Qualcomm alone brings two new SoCs in Linux 7.4 and enables 22 motherboards. The two new chips, codenamed Hawi and Nord, both use custom Oryon cores. The official product names of Hawi and Nord have not been announced yet, but getting early upstream support at such a speed is worthy of attention in itself. Qualcomm Hardware’s new motherboard coverage also includes seven handheld gaming devices powered by Qualcomm’s Dragonwing SoC.
The most eye-catching one is probably that the core finally has basic support for Apple M4 and A18 Pro. However, similar to the Apple M3 support that has also recently entered the mainline kernel, the current ability is limited to booting the kernel and displaying the console. Most of the functions other than this have not yet received mainline kernel support, and the actual availability varies from person to person. The device tree provided for M4 this time covers multiple models: 2024 14-inch MacBook Pro (M4), 2024 24-inch iMac (M4, dual USB-C port version), 2024 24-inch iMac (M4, quad USB-C port version), 2025 13-inch MacBook Air (M4), 2025 15-inch MacBook Air (M4), and the 2024 Mac Mini (M4).
As for Google, the Tensor G5 (codenamed Laguna) installed in last year’s Pixel 10 smartphone also finally received mainline kernel support. Another exciting development in this batch of SoC code merges is the mainline support for the Steam Frame VR headset.
The RISC-V architecture only adds one new motherboard this time, the Milk-V Meles single-board computer equipped with T-Head TH1520 SoC. Originally, Linux 7.4 also planned to remove a large amount of 32-bit ARM code, but since it has not been finalized whether Linux 7.3 or 7.4 will be designated as a long-term support (LTS) version this year - the reporter hopes it will be 7.4 - the related cleanup work has been postponed to at least Linux 7.5. More details on the various SoC changes in Linux 7.4 can be viewed through a set of pull requests on lore.kernel.org.
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