Linux 7.1-rc1 arrived last weekend, marking the end of a busy merge window packed with fresh drivers and code cleanups. Early tests on AMD’s latest Threadripper hardware reveal tangible gains in key areas. Michael Larabel ran about 100 benchmarks on an HP Z6 G5 A workstation powered by the 32-core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9975WX, a Zen 5 beast. Networking workloads shone. Microsoft’s Ethr tool showed TCP and UDP throughput climbing higher than on Linux 7.0. Sockperf socket benchmarks followed suit.
Context switching got faster too. That’s consistent across Zen 5 systems Larabel has probed so far. The OCUDU software-defined radio app posted better numbers. Nginx HTTPS serving sped up. Even Llama.cpp prompt processing accelerated when leaning on CPU OpenBLAS. Not everything clicked perfectly, though. Futex via Stress-NG lagged behind—a regression cropping up on multiple platforms, Threadripper included. Socket activity dipped on this HP rig. Heavy HPC jobs? Mostly unchanged.
But. Overall? Positive. No red flags beyond those hiccups. Larabel’s testing on this Threadripper setup mirrors wins seen on AMD EPYC servers during pre-rc1 Git runs, like database lifts in CockroachDB and Memcached boosts (Phoronix).
Broader 7.1-rc1 changes set the stage for these results. A new in-kernel NTFS driver promises better Windows partition handling than the old option. FRED—Intel’s faster exception delivery—switches on by default. AMD edges toward Zen 6 support. Twelve new SoCs join the party, alongside Lenovo Legion Go drivers and a Yoga fan controller. Graphics stack bulks up. Audio and peripherals expand. Sched_ext, the extensible scheduler class, grabs bug fixes after AI-assisted code reviews flagged old issues (Phoronix).
Cleanups hit hard. Linus Torvalds pulled 138,161 lines of dead code—obsolete Ethernet drivers, PCMCIA relics, AX.25 packet radio, ISDN holdovers. The kernel slims while nearing 40 million lines total, AMD’s graphics driver alone topping 6 million. Intel drops i486 support; Russia’s Baikal CPUs bow out.
AMD pushes further. Engineer Shivank Garg refreshed patches for accelerated page migration, batching folio copies and tapping DMA offload. Rebased to 7.1-rc1 Git, they held performance from v4 tests on EPYC Zen 3 servers—promising for memory-heavy Threadripper runs, even if not directly tested there yet (Phoronix).
Scheduler tweaks in 7.1 may fuel some of those Threadripper uplifts. Recent changes prioritize workloads in ways that benefit high-core-count AMD chips, per early Phoronix notes on select systems. Zen 5 context switching improvements hint at better handling of the PRO 9975WX’s 64 threads. Networking and web server gains align with kernel-level optimizations that play nice with AMD’s core-heavy designs.
Not first rodeo for Threadripper kernel love. Past cycles brought AMD P-State refinements and cache-aware scheduling wins for multi-core LLC setups. 7.1-rc1 builds on that. Phoronix’s X post flags the Threadripper results directly: “Looking good except for the futex regression” (Phoronix on X).
Regressions demand watching. Futex slowdowns span platforms; developers will bisect. Socket dips might tie to specific changes. Still, 7.1-rc1’s trajectory impresses for workstations like the Z6 G5 A, where creators and devs crave snappy compiles, AI inference, and network throughput.
Expect more benchmarks soon. Larabel’s lab keeps churning—EPYC, Ryzen, Threadripper alike. Stable 7.1 eyes mid-June. For AMD high-end users, this rc1 signals kernels catching Zen 5’s stride. Wins outweigh slips. So far.
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