Linux 7.4 Sound Changes Merged: "The AI Flood Continues"

Linux 7.4 sound subsystem changes have been merged, bringing new hardware support and fixes, while also highlighting the growing influence of AI in kernel development.

The update, led by SUSE's Takashi Iwai, addresses a surge of AI-generated patches and new code, which he described as 'the AI flood continues' in the pull request.

The changes include core code hardening to fix race conditions and buffer leaks in the ALSA and JACK subsystems, alongside other typical C bug fixes.

Legacy OSS sequencer emulation code has been marked as deprecated for the upcoming Linux 7.4 release.

New Hardware Support

The update expands support for modern audio hardware, including compressed audio playback on Intel Tigerlake and newer platforms via SOF IPC4.

New drivers are added for AMD ACP 7.0/7.F sound IP with SoundWire and PDM controller support, which appears for upcoming Ryzen Zen 6 platforms.

The update also includes support for the Qualcomm QAIF driver for their Shikra platform and new codec drivers for the ESS ES9039Q2M and Nuvoton NAU83G60 amplifier.

Additional quirks have been added for many different Intel/AMD laptops from Lenovo, ASUS, HP, Acer, HONOR, and MSI.