Linux 5.17 released: Bootlin contributions

Linux 5.17 has been released last Sunday. As usual, the best coverage of what is part of this release comes from LWN (part 1 and part 2), as well as KernelNewbies (unresponsive at the time of this writing) or CNX Software (for an ARM/RISC-V/MIPS focused description).

Bootlin contributed just 34 patches to this release, which isn’t a lot by the number of patches, but in fact includes a number of important new features. Also, we have many more contributions being discussed on the mailing lists or in preparation. For this 5.17 release here are the highlights of our contributions:

  • Alexandre Belloni, as the maintainer of the RTC subsystem, contributed one improvement to an RTC driver
  • Clément Léger improved the Microchip Ocelot Ethernet switch driver performance by implementing FDMA support. This allows network packets that are going from the switch to the CPU, or from the CPU to the switch to be received/sent in a much more efficient fashion than before. The Microchip Ocelot Ethernet switch driver was developed and upstreamed several years ago by Bootlin, see our previous blog post.
  • Clément Léger also contributed smaller fixes: a bug fix in the core software node code, and one PHY driver fix.
  • Hervé Codina implemented support for GPIO interrupts on the old ST Spear320 platform.
  • Maxime Chevallier contributed mqprio support to the Marvell Ethernet MAC mvneta driver, which was the topic of a previous blog post
  • Miquèl Raynal contributed a brand new NAND controller driver, for the NAND controller found in the Renesas RZ/N1 SoC. We expect to contribute to many more aspects of the Renesas RZ/N1 Linux kernel support in the next few months.
  • Miquèl Raynal contributed a few Device Tree changes enabling the ADC on the Texas Instruments AM473x platform, after contributing the driver changes a few releases ago.
  • Miquèl Raynal started contributing some improvements to the 802.15.4 Linux kernel stack, and we also have many more changes in the pipe for this Linux kernel subsystem.
  • Thomas Perrot added support for the Sierra EM919X modem to the existing MHI PCI driver.

Here is the full list of our contributions:

Author: Thomas Petazzoni

Thomas Petazzoni is Bootlin's co-owner and CEO. Thomas joined Bootlin in 2008 as a kernel and embedded Linux engineer, became CTO in 2013, and co-owner/CEO in 2021. More details...

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