Reading Time: 2 minutesAMD has recently released a new generation of Ryzen processors. These CPUs unfortunately seem to have problems with new Linux distributions such as Ubuntu 19.04 and Manjaro Linux.
Systems built around the new AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 7 3700X cannot handle newer Linux distributions such as, among others, Ubuntu 19.04, Manjaro Linux and Fedora Workstation 31. All systemd services are falling and in some cases still to come a kernel panic. Linux site Phoronix tested the new processors and discovered the problem.
AMD has indicated that it is probably related to the latest kernel, 5.0.9, but Michael Larabel from Phoronix indicates that the use of this kernel on older distributions works fine.
“That’s why it doesn’t seem to be simply a kernel regression, but either a kernel + systemd interaction problem that occurs on the AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors or an awkward thing that happens with the X570 chipset. When we left the AMD the day before asked to launch again, they were still investigating the problem and apparently not sure of the root cause at the moment.
I spent a lot of time figuring out this issue and hoped that there was a BIOS upgrade or settings adjustment or kernel command line parameter to work around this issue, but so far it has failed in the available time. Otherwise, in principle, all recent / new Linux distributions, at least those that use systemd, appear to be affected, “says Larabel.
So it is not yet clear exactly where things go wrong. Linux users can work around this problem by using the Long Term Support version of Ubuntu or another distribution that does not run on the latest Linux kernel.
It is not the first time that the Ryzen processors have not got along well with Linux. The first generation also caused problems during compiling and produced segmentation faults.