Linux Kernel Starts Retiring Support for AMD's 30-Year-Old K5 CPUs

Linux 7.1 started phasing out support for Intel's 37-year-old i486 processor. Linux 7.2 removed drivers for the old AMD Elan 32-bit systems on a chip. And now some i586 and i686 class processors are being removed, reports Phoronix: Supporting those vintage GPUs without the Time Stamp Counter "TSC" instruction are becoming a burden... TSC-capable Intel Pentium processors and the likes will still be supported with this just being for TSC-less i586/i686 CPUs. Among the CPUs impacted by this latest change is the AMD K5 as well as various Cyrix processor models. The K5 was AMD's first entirely in-house designed processor that was first introduced in 1996 to counter the Intel Pentium CPU. TSC "support can now be assumed as a boot requirement for modern Linux," the article points out, which will allow the removal of various non-TSC code paths from the Linux kernel's x86 code. Tom's Hardware remembers the K5 "wasn't a very popular processor as it arrived late, then offered lackluster performance in the competitive environment it joined." Launch SKUs in 1996 were limited to clocks from 75 MHz to 133 MHz, and, due to being late, Intel's Pentium line was already faster. AMD still managed to get an edge on the Cyrix 6x86, though.

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