AMD’s Ryzen CPU is finally shipping in a few days! If you are planning to be an early adopter of AMD Ryzen processors, you will really want to be running a newer Linux kernel release for proper support and performance.
I haven’t received any communication from AMD about any review samples or the like, so I am not under NDA for the upcoming AMD Ryzen launch on 2 March… And thankfully received some information from a reliable source this weekend regarding Ryzen support Linux requirements. So here they are.
I am told that if using Ubuntu 16.10 / Ubuntu 16.04.2 as a base state for AMD Ryzen, users should generally be okay. In other words, you won’t get a kernel oops on boot or anything dramatic like that but could be missing some functionality. However, you will really be better off with a newer Linux kernel.
As I wrote about back in December, Linux 4.10 landed a lot of Zen/Ryzen code. So with Linux 4.10 looks to be — and reaffirmed by this trusted confidant — a good point for AMD Ryzen testing and usage. So far in the Linux 4.11 cycle we haven’t seen anything Ryzen-specific appear to come through.
But if you don’t feel comfortable moving to the recently-released Linux 4.10 or your distribution hasn’t yet offered you an easy upgrade path, an alternative is to be running at least Linux 4.9.10.
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