Kernel 6.16: Fine-tuning the details

3 months ago 1

Kernel 6.16: Fine-tuning the details

Julien Massot avatar

Julien Massot
July 31, 2025

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The kernel 6.16 has been released, and with it comes the support for new hardware, improved security, and optimizations.

Please refer to LWN's articles for a complete overview of this kernel release: First half merge window and second half.

Linux 6.16 introduces a range of enhancements, including:

New hardware support: Initial open source support for NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell GPUs via the Nouveau driver.
Performance and architecture improvements: Native CPU optimization via CONFIG_X86_NATIVE_CPU
Embedded and audio features: USB audio offload for low-power playback

As always, this new version includes contributions from Collabora. We have no less than 22 authored contributors on this release, aiming to improve Rockchip and Mediatek support in the Linux kernel!

Collabora Contributions to Linux 6.16

The release of Linux 6.16 marks another milestone in Collabora's ongoing commitment to improving the Linux kernel and supporting open hardware. Across multiple subsystems—from graphics and multimedia to device trees and SoC enablement—our engineers have contributed a wide range of enhancements, cleanups, and new feature support that push the platform forward for developers and users alike.

MediaTek Platform Enablement

Collabora engineers continued advancing support for MediaTek SoCs, notably the MT8395, MT8186, and MT8195. This cycle included improving display and HDMI driver for Genio SoC series, integrating missing regulators and power domains, and refining device tree bindings across multiple platforms. On the audio front, we enhanced support for the MT6359 codec, adding features like headphone impedance detection and simplifying initialization logic.

Rockchip SoC Maintenance

Support for Rockchip SoCs like the RK3588 and RK3576 was further expanded in this release. Collabora contributed support for color depth in the Rockchip RK3588 HDMI PHY driver as a prerequisite for proper color depth support in the HDMI video output.

On the RK3576 side a power-domain quirk landed, which works around a boot issue if eMMC flash is present. We also upstreamed a new audio driver to add support for audio capture and playback on RK3576 devices, including HDMI audio, which necessitated some clock driver changes. Apart from that, we added support for the hardware random number generator on this SoC, and enabled support for SATA.

Last but not least, we added support for the Radxa ROCK 5B+ board, a successor board of the popular ROCK 5B with slightly changed I/O capabilities and LPDDR5 memory, but the same RK3588 SoC.

GPU & DRM Subsystem Contributions

The open source graphics stack saw significant gains thanks to Collabora’s work on Panfrost and Panthor, the drivers for Arm Mali GPUs. Notably, AARCH64_4K MMU support was added to Panfrost, enabling better compatibility with newer GPU generations. Panthor introduced buffer object labeling, making memory tracking and debugging more transparent via debugfs and ioctl interfaces. Complementary work on drm/shmem-helper, virtio, and syncobj mechanisms helped reinforce memory management across drivers. These updates are improving the reliability and traceability of GPU workloads in Linux.

Multimedia & Codec Improvements

This release also saw significant progress in hardware-accelerated video support. Collabora contributed improvements to Rockchip’s RKVDEC driver, including advanced H.264 profile support, low-latency flushing, and better image layout handling. The Verisilicon VDPU981 driver gained support for AV1 wide4K and NV15 decoding formats. Additionally, the MediaTek JPEG driver was extended to support 34-bit addressing and improved error resilience.

CI & Testing Infrastructure

Behind the scenes, Collabora also continued strengthening Linux’s continuous integration and validation pipelines, particularly for graphics drivers. These infrastructure contributions are essential to keeping the kernel robust and maintainable.

A Team Effort

These contributions reflect the work of a diverse and talented group of Collabora engineers, including: Adrián Larumbe, AngeloGioacchino Del Regno, Ariel D'Alessandro, Benjamin Gaignard, Boris Brezillon, Christopher Obbard, Cristian Ciocaltea, Daniel Almeida, Daniel Stone, Detlev Casanova, Dmitry Osipenko, Eugen Hristev, Faith Ekstrand, Frédéric Danis, Julien Massot, Laura Nao, Louis-Alexis Eyraud, Martyn Welch, Michael Riesch, Muhammad Usama Anjum, Nicolas Dufresne, Nicolas Frattaroli, Nícolas F. R. A. Prado, Pekka Paalanen, Sebastian Fricke, Sebastian Reichel, and Vignesh Raman.

Here is a full list of Collabora's contributions to this kernel release: