AMD Published Two Zen-Related Patches For The Linux Kernel

We've seen AMD already pushing open-source compiler patches for Zen and it seems they are ready to begin pushing Linux kernel changes too for their next-generation CPU architecture.

Aravind Gopalakrishnan of AMD posted two patches for Family 17h, a.k.a. Zen. The new feature patches can be found on the kernel mailing list until being mainlined. The patches are adding the CLZERO instruction so that it can be exposed via /proc/cpuinfo and adding the Scalable MCA cpuid bit.

The CLZERO instruction for Zen zero's out a 64-byte cache line specified in RAX. The Scalable MCA is described as, "MCA extensions expands existing register space for the MCE banks and also introduces a new MSR range to accommodate new banks. Future additions to AMD MCE code will first need to detect if SMCA is enabled before enabling the new features."

AMD Zen processors will begin appearing in 2016 so there will likely be more Zen-related open-source Linux patches appearing in short order.