A Small But Useful Debugging Addition For AMD Zen Systems With Linux 7.1
A small but convenient feature is coming with the Linux 7.1 that will be useful in debugging AMD Zen system problems and information reporting/transparency purposes.
While AMD's AGESA firmware component has been around for a decade and leveraged by AM4 and AM5 Zen processors to date (eventually to be replaced by openSIL), until now there hasn't been a convenient way of finding out your AGESA version under Linux unless rebooting into your system BIOS/UEFI screen or parsing the BIOS version and seeing if your motherboard vendor's release notes for BIOS updates make mention of the AGESA version/update. AGESA updates can be useful for new performance optimizations, expanding system memory compatibility, CPU security features, new CPU support, etc.
Finally with Linux 7.1, the AGESA version when detected will be printed to the kernel log. Thus with the Linux kernel moving forward on AMD Zen systems it can be a simple matter of grep'ing the kernel log, e.g. sudo dmesg | grep AGESA for quickly and easily determining your AGESA version under Linux.
This patch providing the AGESA reporting based on the DMI additional information data is queued into tip/tip.git's x86/platform Git branch. With the support now found in a TIP branch, it should be submitted for the Linux 7.1 merge window kicking off as soon as next week.
It would be great if the AGESA version was also reported under /sys/class/dmi/id/ for non-root access and easier parsing, such as I've wanted the information for many years in the interest of benchmark reporting/transparency as part of the system information, but perhaps that will come in the future.
While AMD's AGESA firmware component has been around for a decade and leveraged by AM4 and AM5 Zen processors to date (eventually to be replaced by openSIL), until now there hasn't been a convenient way of finding out your AGESA version under Linux unless rebooting into your system BIOS/UEFI screen or parsing the BIOS version and seeing if your motherboard vendor's release notes for BIOS updates make mention of the AGESA version/update. AGESA updates can be useful for new performance optimizations, expanding system memory compatibility, CPU security features, new CPU support, etc.
Finally with Linux 7.1, the AGESA version when detected will be printed to the kernel log. Thus with the Linux kernel moving forward on AMD Zen systems it can be a simple matter of grep'ing the kernel log, e.g. sudo dmesg | grep AGESA for quickly and easily determining your AGESA version under Linux.
This patch providing the AGESA reporting based on the DMI additional information data is queued into tip/tip.git's x86/platform Git branch. With the support now found in a TIP branch, it should be submitted for the Linux 7.1 merge window kicking off as soon as next week.
It would be great if the AGESA version was also reported under /sys/class/dmi/id/ for non-root access and easier parsing, such as I've wanted the information for many years in the interest of benchmark reporting/transparency as part of the system information, but perhaps that will come in the future.