It turns out the latest AMD Ryzen desktop processors offer support for AMD Smart Trace Buffer (STB) that previously was only limited to mobile platforms.

Sent out today were a set of eight Linux kernel patches around the AMD Platform Management Controller (PMC) driver. Notable there is confirmation that AMD STB support is extended to the latest Ryzen desktop processors. [1]One of the patches confirm the newly-added desktop support:

"Previously, AMD's Ryzen Desktop SoCs did not include support for STB. However, to accommodate this recent change, PMFW has implemented a new message port pair mechanism for handling messages, arguments, and responses, specifically designed for distinguishing from Mobile SoCs. Therefore, it is necessary to update the driver to properly handle this incoming change."

The patch adds AMD STB support on the desktop side for Family 1Ah Model 44h processors, a.k.a. Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" desktop CPUs.

As previously [2]explained of AMD Smart Trace Buffer , it's a debugging facility to help analyze the last feature that was running on the system before hitting a failure. It's a non-intrusive way for helping to analyze CPU issues with this always-running trace buffer in the background. Now it turns out AMD STB is supported on the latest Ryzen desktop class processors.

The [3]8 patch series also prepares STB support for Family 1Ah Model 70h processors as well as updating the IP information for newer SoCs.



[1] https://lore.kernel.org/platform-driver-x86/20241028070438.1548737-8-Shyam-sundar.S-k@amd.com/

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Smart-Trace-Buffer-Linux

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/platform-driver-x86/20241028070438.1548737-1-Shyam-sundar.S-k@amd.com/