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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Ricardo Neri authored the commit identified by the Linux Foundation as the Linux kernel’s millionth: an x86 change adding enumeration support for the Intel SERIALIZE instruction. The commit is dated July 26, 2020. Its ordinal depends on the Foundation’s method of combining the converted historical BitKeeper repository with Linus Torvalds’ Git repository.
Who made the millionth Linux kernel commit?
The Linux Foundation named Ricardo Neri of Intel as the author. The commit is 85b23fbc7d88f8c6e3951721802d7845bc39663d, titled “x86/cpufeatures: Add enumeration for SERIALIZE instruction.” The Foundation published its account on September 30, 2020, as part of its discussion of research for its 2020 Linux Kernel History Report.
Neri’s change added enumeration support for the SERIALIZE instruction. That is a specific CPU-feature identification change, not the implementation of an entire processor feature. The Foundation described Neri at the time as a software engineer who had worked on Linux feature support for Intel microprocessors for 12 years as part of the company’s CPU enabling team; that is a statement about his role when the account appeared, not a current biography.
How did the Linux Foundation count to one million?
The count was not simply the number shown by running git log on Linus Torvalds’ repository alone. The Foundation included the historical BitKeeper repository, converted to Git, which it counted as 63,428 commits. It then searched Linus’ repository history for the merge at which its own count, plus that historical subtotal, passed one million.
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Because 1,000,000 minus 63,428 equals 936,572, the Foundation looked for a merge where Linus’ repository had at least 936,572 commits. Its examples show the count immediately before and after the threshold-crossing merge:
| Point in the history | Linus repository count reported by the Foundation | Combined count including converted BitKeeper history |
|---|---|---|
Merge 92c59e126b21fd212195358a0d296e787e444087 |
936,456 | 999,884 |
Next merge, 2f3fbfdaf77f3ac417d0511fac221f76af79f6fc |
937,105 | 1,000,533 |
The first merge is 116 commits short of the required Linus-repository count; the next is 533 beyond it. The Foundation reported a combined total of 1,000,533 at the crossing merge and identified Neri’s July 26 change as the millionth commit under this counting method. The merge itself is dated August 3, 2020.
Why “the millionth” depends on the counting method
A commit’s ordinal is meaningful only relative to the history being counted and the rules used to count it. Here, the Foundation’s answer depends on including the 63,428 commits in its converted BitKeeper history alongside Linus’ repository. The combined count at the crossing point was 1,000,533, rather than exactly one million; the named commit is its identification of the millionth within that historical sequence.
The Foundation also noted that more than one million people had taken its free Introduction to Linux course. That was separate context for its “week of millions,” not a count of kernel contributors or commits.
What was the SERIALIZE instruction’s context in 2020?
The Foundation connected the instruction to Intel’s then-forthcoming Sapphire Rapids and Alder Lake microarchitectures. That description reflects the article’s 2020 context; it should not be read as a statement that those processors are still forthcoming.
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