Over the past year, Intel has been working hard to prepare the Linux kernel for the end of the "Family6" CPU era. Given that "Family6" has been in use since the 1990s, and that Intel CPUs will appear in Family19 (as in DiamondRapids) and Family18 as part of the new CPU recognition, the handling of the IntelCPU model in the Linux kernel has been significantly adjusted.

To do this, many Linux kernel checks need to be reconfigured to handle multiple families of Intel handlers. In Linux 6.15, it seems that most of the work will finally be completed.

On the Linux kernel mailing list, Intel engineers have released a series of patches to complete an audit of Intel's serial number handling and move to the latest Vendor Family Model (VFM) handling to correctly handle existing Intel CPUs and future processors.

Intel's Sohil Mehta commented on the recent series of patches:

"Intel mainstream processors have used Family6 family models for decades. This series is a review of all arch/x86 Intel family model checks in preparation for the upcoming Series 18 and Series 19. It also converts the last remaining Intel x86_model checks to VFM checks."

Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar said yesterday:

"I've applied the first 13 patches to tip:x86/cpu to help advance this effort, fixed a few bugs, but haven't found any functionality issues so far unless something goes wrong in -next."

As of this morning, the patches have been adopted by the x86/core branch. Since these patches are now part of this tip/tip.git branch, they should be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.15 merge window, absent any last-minute issues or concerns raised by other kernel developers.