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By The Linux Camp News, October 25, 2026
Apple M4 storage-controller support has reached mainline for the Linux 7.4 cycle. The change addresses hardware-specific register access and queue registration, but does not establish complete M4 platform readiness.
Apple M4 T8132 ANS2 NVMe support has entered mainline Linux through the block-subsystem updates for the 7.4 development cycle. The kernel merge tracker confirmed integration at 00:20 UTC on October 25, 2026. This is development-tree inclusion during the merge window, not an announcement of a stable Linux 7.4 release. 2 1
The hardware difference is in how the driver addresses the controller and registers its I/O queues. In the patch author's explanation quoted by Phoronix in August, Yureka Lilian described a separate MMIO base for the M4 controller's NVMMU and an additional MMIO write required to register queues. MMIO means memory-mapped I/O: software accesses hardware registers through memory addresses. Consequently, reusing the earlier controller setup unchanged would omit an M4-specific registration requirement. The proposed work added device-tree bindings and driver support to accommodate those differences; the supplied merge record does not include the final M4 driver diff. 3
For engineers bringing Linux to T8132 hardware, the concrete benefit is upstream storage-controller enablement. This is an extension of an existing controller family, rather than a new general-purpose NVMe performance feature: Lilian described the M4 variant as otherwise largely the same as the ANS2 variants in M1 through M3 chips. That distinction keeps the scope narrow. The announcement does not establish a storage-performance gain or a new capability for those earlier platforms. 3 2
Before treating this as a deployment milestone, verify broader support for the intended M4 machine, not just its storage controller. Phoronix's August report explicitly separated NVMe enablement from daily-use Linux readiness. That was an August assessment, not an updated October verdict. As of the sources retrieved October 25, the packet establishes the storage merge but leaves tested machine models, firmware and device-tree prerequisites, distribution availability and broader platform readiness unresolved. 3 2