Fundamentals 3 min read

What’s New in Linux Kernel 4.20? Key Features and Highlights

Linux Kernel 4.20, the largest release in over a year, arrived just before Christmas, bringing major updates such as BPF network parsing, new hardware support, C‑SKY architecture, pressure‑stall detection, XArray data structures, and early NVIDIA HDMI 2.0 driver support.

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What’s New in Linux Kernel 4.20? Key Features and Highlights
21CTO guide: The latest Linux 4.20 is a massive kernel update, the biggest in over a year according to Phoronix.

After several test releases, Linux Kernel 4.20 was officially released just before Christmas.

Linus Torvalds wrote in his mailing list post that there seemed no reason to delay the 4.20 release any further, wishing everyone a happy holiday.

Highlights of version 4.20 include:

BPF support for network flow parsers

taprio traffic scheduler

Point‑to‑point DMA support in the PCI layer

Removal of variable‑length arrays

Support for the C‑SKY architecture

Pressure‑stall detection mechanism

XArray data structure

Driver and hardware updates, including support for AMD Picasso APU and Raven 2 APU

Initial support in the NVIDIA Nouveau driver for HDMI 2.0

Support for Chengdu Haiguang x86 server chip Dhyana (based on Zen architecture)

Support for another Chinese C‑SKY 32‑bit CPU architecture

Early support for AMD Zen 2 CPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, and Huawei HiSilicon Hi3670

For detailed information, see the mailing list post: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/12/23/187 https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wg0zF4wa87Q5rAhFe2es0t0eExX2UjvKD7-Pghvcbt5Vw@mail.gmail.com/
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KernelLinuxOperating SystemBPFHardware Support4.20
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