New Linux kernel patches introduce workaround for system stuttering on AMD systems

Linux kernel maintainers have backported a workaround to Linux 6.1.19 and Linux 6.2.6 from Linux 6.3-rc2 to fix system stuttering on some AMD machines. According to Phoronix, the updates were backported to older Linux 6 releases on Monday morning following the release of workaround on Linux 6.3-rc2 on Sunday.

The stuttering issue was noted by users with AMD Ryzen systems that were using outdated fTPM firmware. It only became an issue for Linux users after AMD’s fTPM hardware random number generator started being used by default. If you run a distro such as Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, you probably won’t be suffering from the issue because it uses the older Linux 5.19 kernel out-of-the-box.

The patches released to the Linux kernel, it’s important to note, are just workarounds and not actually fixes for the problem. The patch just disables the hardware random number generator on fTPM versions known to suffer from the bug.

AMD has issued actual fixes for the problem since it was discovered last year but not all hardware has received an update yet. Where hardware has been updated, it may also be the case that people simply haven’t applied the updates on their system yet.

Source. Kernel.org via Phoronix

New Linux kernel patches introduce workaround for system stuttering on AMD systems