Linux 6.14 AMD PMF Driver To Handle Custom BIOS Inputs

The AMD Platform Management Framework "PMF" driver is set to see some enhancements come the Linux 6.14 merge window.

Among the AMD PMF driver changes to be queued up so far within the x86 platform driver's "for-next" Git branch ahead of Linux 6.14 is enabling support for custom BIOS inputs within the PMF-TA (Platform Management Framework Trusted Application) code. The patch explains:

platform/x86/amd/pmf: Enable Custom BIOS Inputs for PMF-TA

Introduce support for passing custom BIOS inputs to the PMF-TA to assess BIOS input policy conditions. The PMF driver will adjust system settings based on these BIOS input conditions and their corresponding output actions.

This ultimately should be for handling for customizations made by laptop/motherboard vendors around thermals, power, and performance for modern AMD Ryzen systems. A big focus with the AMD PMF Linux driver work has been around Smart PC Solutions Builder with allowing OEMs more control to customize the behavior of their systems.

It will be interesting to see how much of an impact these "smart" solutions ultimately have on power/performance/thermals but at the same time when the system vendors have too much control around platform tunables has often led to lots of device quirks/workarounds and other often times buggy behavior but at least AMD doesn't allow unfettered access but is retaining some control to assess the inputs (policies).