Linus Torvalds is disappointed with AMD's fTPM and recommends disabling it to solve the stutter problem.

CTOnews.com August 2 news, Linux Kernel creator and lead developer Linus Torvalds recently posted a message on the mailing list expressing his disappointment with the AMD firmware trusted platform module fTPM.

Torvalds commented on fTPM as "crud" in the mailing list and recommended that the best way is to disable fTPM altogether. He also urges other Linux developers to use CPU RDRAND instructions to perform the same tasks without causing the same problems as fTPM.

Torvalds said bluntly in the mailing list: "disable the stupid fTPM HWRND thing" (disable this stupid fTPM HWRND) and thought that the existing fixes were largely ineffective.

Torvalds indicates that after switching to RDRAND, the performance is not as good as fTPM, but at least there will be no stutter.

CTOnews.com previously reported that AMD had previously admitted that the Ruilong processor caused intermittent stutter problems in Win10, Win11 and various Linux distributions after enabling fTPM, a firmware-based trusted platform module.

This BUG is most pronounced in the Linux 6.1 kernel, mainly after the hardware random number generator (hwrng) enables kernel multithreading (kthread) for untrusted sources. For example, setting the hwrng source to zero mass (quality setting of zero) will trigger.

Related readings:

"fTPM is on the back. AMD confirms that there is an intermittent stutter problem with Ryzen Auron processor in Microsoft Win11/10 system, which needs to be solved by updating BIOS."

"AMD releases new microcodes to motherboard suppliers to fix stutter problems caused by frequent polling of fTPM by the system."

"after Win10 / Win11, the AMD Auron processor also causes intermittent stutter problems in Linux when fTPM is enabled."

"Linux 6.1 Compact 6.2 New Patch released: alleviates intermittent stutters after the AMD Apron processor is enabled with fTPM"