AMD’s legendary K5, its first independently designed processor, is being removed from the Linux kernel — the 4.3-million-transistor chip gets the axe because it lacks Time Stamp Counter (TSC) support, making it a coding burden

Linux kernel 7.2 is set to drop support for AMD’s K5 processors because they lack TSC support.

The patch also affects some older AMD embedded chips, including AMD Elan and AMD Geode variants.

The change is part of Linux’s broader cleanup of legacy x86 CPU code that is costly to maintain.

It marks the end of support for a historically important early AMD x86 family.