It has been a challenging period for Intel employees as the company significantly reduces its workforce, with reports indicating extensive layoffs affecting various departments. This downsizing is now beginning to impact the company’s support for Linux kernel drivers.
Intel has officially removed the maintainers for several software components, specifically targeting drivers for older and less widely used chipsets. Notably, the Intel PTP DFL ToD driver, which is used for time-of-day functionality on FPGA cards, and the Intel WWAN IOSM driver, which supports M.2 modems and some Chromebook devices, are among those losing support. While Intel has largely exited this market, devices relying on these modems still exist in the field.
Phoronix has been monitoring these changes closely. Some drivers remain supported but have lost one or more maintainers; this includes the Intel Ethernet RDMA and the T7XX 5G WWAN drivers. Additional shifts occurred earlier when the status of the Intel CPU Temperature and Intel WMI Slim BootLoader drivers was downgraded to "orphan," meaning they are still technically supported but no longer have assigned maintainers.
Even newer hardware does not escape this trend—as the maintainer for the Gaudi AI accelerator driver has also left Intel. Although a new maintainer has been appointed, the main upstream kernel driver does not yet support the latest Gaudi 3 hardware. Furthermore, Intel has recently decided to discontinue the Clear Linux OS project.
While the direct impact of these driver changes may seem minimal at first glance, the overall pattern raises concerns. The consistent removal of engineering roles puts Intel in a precarious position for future recovery. The reallocation of maintainers away from Linux kernel support could decrease confidence in Intel’s ongoing commitment to the Linux ecosystem, which may affect their market standing in the long term.
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