Linux 7.4 Sunsetting Old EDAC Drivers Due To "AI Generated Fixes Frenzy"

In addition to introducing the new Intel BFF driver, the Error Detection And Correction "EDAC" kernel subsystem is sunsetting a number of old hardware drivers due to increased noise to AI/LLM-generated bug fixes for these likely unused or minimally used drivers. Similar to the Linux networking subsystem earlier this year begining to drop old network drivers due to AI-driven bug reports, EDAC driver maintainers are facing a similar problem due to increased bug reports/patches for old EDAC drivers likely not seeing any real-world use -- at least for those still using up-to-date mainline kernel versions in production. To avoid that in effect AI spam, they are orphaning the drivers to then be removed in a follow-on kernel release. EDAC maintainer Borislav Petkov of AMD explained in today's pull request; "Orphan several EDAC drivers: i82975x, x38, xgene, i3200. Those have been receiving just drive-by updates and no one really uses them. At least there are no traces of usage on the mailing lists. So, with the advent of AI-generated fixes frenzy, and because no one can really test fixes on those, it is time to sunset them and point them towards the eternal happy hunting-grounds" The i82975x driver is for the Intel 975X Express chipset from back in the day... I still have some Intel 975X hardware from two decades ago, granted haven't been powered on in well over a decade. Fond memories of the Intel 975X (and Abit) days. The x38 EDAC driver is for the Intel X38 MCH. The xgene driver is for the former AppliedMicro X-Gene SOC with the X-Gene 3 going into the Ampere eMAG following the acquisition by Ampere Computing. Lastly, the i3200 driver is for Intel's 3200/3210 chipset. New to the EDAC code for Linux 7.4 is a dummy EDAC driver used for testing the EDAC core code from within a virtual machine. The other new addition is the Intel BFF driver used for dealing with aging silicon and stuck bits as the Bit Fix Filter. Plus a lot of AI-powered fixes to the rest of the EDAC code. The full list of EDAC feature patches for Linux 7.4 can be found via this pull request.