This week besides the [1]drama over Apple Silicon maintainership for the upstream Linux kernel , in recent days there has also been a number of rather subtle changes to the maintainership of several Intel Linux kernel drivers.

My curiosity piqued last week when noticing some Intel driver maintainer changes beginning... Longtime Intel Linux engineer Fenghua Yu stepped away from maintaining some drivers. Fenghua Yu stepped away from the [2]IDXD driver as the Intel Data Accelerator Driver for Xeon Sapphire Rapids and newer. Intel engineer Vinicius Costa Gomes is taking over Yu's role as IDXD maintainer. Fenghua Yu also stepped down as [3]RDT driver maintainer for the Intel Resource Director Technology with Intel engineer Tony Luck stepping up as maintainer.

Fenghua stepping down as Intel IDXD and RDT Linux driver maintainers on both patches was attributed to "job transition". It's not clear what this job transition is but a bit surprising with Fenghua Yu being one of Intel's longest Linux kernel engineers. Fenghua has worked on Intel Linux kernel code going back to early 2000. Over 25 years working on various Intel hardware enablement and features for the Linux kernel. Hopefully Fenghua's Intel Linux kernel engineering expertise is transitioning to some new driver/project given the vast experience over the years.

After seeing those Intel maintainer change patches surface on the mailing list, I've been waiting to see if there have been any other maintainer changes. Particularly as the last time there were multiple Intel Linux maintainer changes was back in October when [4]several Intel Linux engineers left the company as part of last year's layoffs and voluntary departures.

The Intel Idle driver maintainers were [5]updated on Thursday to "reflect the current state of affairs". There are new maintainers looking over the Intel Idle driver while former maintainer Jacob Pan left Intel last year to join Microsoft as a Linux kernel engineer.

Somewhat curiously, more MAINTAINERS patches this week [6]adjust the USB4 and Thunderbolt maintainer from using his Intel.com email address to now relying on his personal kernel.org address. There was a similar [7]patch for the ACPI PMIC entry too moving away from an Intel.com address to a kernel.org address.

For now it's not clear the motivation for these recent Intel Linux driver maintainer entry changes, but as usual I'll remain on the lookout for any other updates.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-Lead-No-Upstream

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250131173551.3979408-1-fenghua.yu@intel.com/

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250131190731.3981085-1-fenghua.yu@intel.com/

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Maintainers-Linux-Depart

[5] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pm/2774831.mvXUDI8C0e@rjwysocki.net/

[6] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250204124959.3998521-1-mika.westerberg@linux.intel.com/

[7] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250204112219.3969629-1-mika.westerberg@linux.intel.com/