Linux Patches Enable Apple M4 NVMe Support

While the Apple M4 SoCs aren't yet supported by the mainline Linux kernel and the Apple M3 series hardware isn't yet ready for end-users , there are some early elements of the Apple M4 support beginning to come together by open-source developers working on the Apple Silicon support. Sent out to the Linux kernel mailing list were patches for enabling NVMe solid state drive support with the M4.

Yureka Lilian sent out the patches this week for enabling the ANS2 NVMe with the Apple M4 (T8132) SoC. Lilian explained of the NVMe support for the M4:
"This patch series adds dt-bindings and driver support for ANS2 NVMe on the Apple t8132 (M4) SoC.

This variant uses a separate MMIO base for its NVMMU and requires the IO queues to be registered using an additional MMIO write. Otherwise it is largerly the same as the ANS2 NVMe variants present on Apple M1-M3 SoCs."

Reworking less than 100 lines of code to the Apple NVMe driver were needed for this M4 enablement. But, again, it will likely be quite some time before the Apple M4 hardware is day-to-day usable for Linux enthusiasts let alone fully supported upstream in the Linux kernel.


Those interested can see this patch series for that Apple M4 NVMe enablement work.