AMD this month made support for its Zen 6 generation of processors available in the open-source GCC 16 compiler. This marks not only an official mention of the yet-to-be-released components, but also a change in strategy that will finally help developers offer optimized support for the next generations of Ryzen and Epyc on Linux at launch.
As Phoronix explains, while Intel has been in the habit of offering early support for its new processors for years, AMD has been in the habit of leaving open-source compiler support until the launch of each Ryzen generation, or even days later.
This is especially problematic because of the cadence of GCC, which is annual, and LVVM/Clang, which is biannual. While there are occasional updates to fix bugs that may introduce support, Linux distributions generally wait for new full versions of GCC.
It looks like this is finally changing for Zen 6 processors. GCC has already received AMD’s Znver 6 patch, giving plenty of time for its incorporation into GCC 16.1, which arrives in April. The first Zen 6 processors are expected much later, ensuring support for several Linux distributions at launch.
Zen 6 support in GCC confirms new instructions in the architecture
In addition to having official support for Zen 6 coming early to the open-source compiler, the Znver6 patch also confirms new instructions for AMD’s latest architecture. The list includes: AVX512_BMM, AVX_NE_CONVERT, AVX_IFMA, AVX_VNNI_INT8, and AVX512_FP16.
Finally, it is interesting to mention that not every distribution among the best-known Linux distributions will be able to take advantage of Zen 6 support in its next version. Phoronix highlights that GCC 16.1 will already be part of Fedora 44, guaranteeing the Znver6 patch, but users of the popular Ubuntu will have to wait longer.
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This is because Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is still based on GCC 15. Canonical only uses the latest version of GCC each year in Ubuntu xx.10 releases, so a slight delay in this distribution is expected.
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Source: https://www.adrenaline.com.br/amd/amd-zen-6-aparece-em-software-antes-do-lancamento/
