Cache Aware Scheduling is easily one of the most exciting features of this new kernel for those running on modern systems that sport multiple last-level cache (LLC) domains. For some workloads Cache Aware Scheduling can yield very nice performance benefits as shown in prior benchmarks.
Linux 7.2 has continued preparing for AMD's Zen 6 processors as recently launched with the EPYC 9006 "Venice" series and coming in the months ahead to next-gen desktops and laptops. There still are some Zen 6 patches floating around but it would appear the mainline kernel support is now in good shape for all standard functionality.
For AMD graphics, there is initial AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 FRL support albeit disabled by default for this kernel version and other features of the HDMI 2.1 specification like VRR and ALLM didn't make it for this kernel version. The AMDGPU driver also merged the DC power module to better match the power behavior of AMD Radeon graphics under Linux.
Also exciting on the AMD side is the ISP4 driver was merged for supporting the web camera on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a and other upcoming high-end AMD Ryzen laptops. Great seeing this modern AMD image signal processing stack finally come together.
On the Intel side, there is initial support for the rugged Panther Lake SoC "Panther Lake R", more Diamond Rapids and Nova Lake H preparations, TDX run-time updates, and other enhancements.
Linux 7.2 also has initial support for Apple M3 devices although the M3 Pro / Max / Ultra support isn't coming until Linux 7.3. Beyond that, this Apple M3 support is very basic for booting to a console and not much more yet. It will still be a while before these newer albeit still two generation old Macs are working out nicer with the mainline Linux kernel.
Linux 7.2 also brings various performance optimizations to some Intel graphics hardware enjoying better performance, an MGLRU improvement yielding nice gains for MongoDB, the previously-noted Cache Aware Scheduling, faster reading of /proc/filesystems
WiFi 8 preparations for Linux also continue to be underway with the Intel IWLWIFI driver seeing work there and then other Linux WiFi infrastructure around WiFi Aware and UHR.
One nifty new feature of Linux 7.2 is the USB4STREAM protocol developed by Intel to allow for quickly sending data packets between USB4/Thunderbolt-connected systems.
See our Linux 7.2 feature overview for more exhaustive details on the many kernel improvements and other changes to find with this new kernel. There are also a number of old drivers/code removed such as for Herculues Monochrome ISA graphics cards, the Profibus driver, AF_ALG is deprecated, dropping ARCnet for ISA and PCMCIA, and other old drivers are removed.