Phoronix

While Intel Xeon server processors have supported sub-NUMA clustering (SNC) for a while, HPE SGI UV servers with SNC enabled haven't worked under Linux... But with Linux 6.5 that is changing...

The sound subsystem updates were sent in today for the in-development Linux 6.5 kernel merge window...

Today is a very fun and interesting round of benchmarking... Recently Supermicro sent over their Hyper SuperServer SYS-221H-TNR and Intel supplied the Xeon Max 9468 and Xeon Max 9480 for finally being able to benchmark Xeon Max processors, the Sapphire Rapids parts featuring 64GB of HBM2e memory. For this initial benchmarking article is a look at the Xeon Max 9468/9480 dual socket performance when running in HBM-only mode and HBM-caching mode for showing some of the workloads where Xeon Max can deliver significant uplift compared to when running in flat (1LM) mode without assigning anything to the HBM memory for seeing the impact when the specialized memory goes unused.

Nearly a decade ago when there was more hope for the MIPS open-source ecosystem and the initial growth of lower-cost single board computers the MIPS Creator CI20 was launched by Imagination Tech. It wasn't too successful and MIPS development has since reached the end of the road, but finally with Linux 6.5 is the Bluetooth and WiFi on this MIPS single board computer going to finally be supported by the mainline kernel...

Well, here is something nifty being worked on by Oracle. Oracle engineers have been developing "bpftune" as a new always-on, automatic tuning of Linux systems -- in particular, the many different Linux kernel tunables available and this tuning system leverages the kernel's Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) observability features to carry out its work...

The HID subsystem updates have been submitted for the ongoing Linux 6.5 merge window. Most notable is NVIDIA contributing a Linux kernel driver six years late for their SHIELD controller...

Microsoft's latest contribution to the Mesa 3D graphics driver stack is enhancing their Direct3D 12 driver to support AV1 video encoding with the VA-API interface...

Ted Ts'o has submitted all the EXT4 feature changes for the Linux 6.5 merge window. EXT4 this round is seeing various clean-ups, bug fixes, and other enhancements but there is one performance optimization worth calling attention to...

The in-development Linux 6.5 kernel is shifting to initializing the x86 floating-point unit (FPU) initialization later in the boot process as part of a broader effort for trying to clean-up the Linux kernel boot process at least on x86/x86_64 systems...

"Some people relax with a nice drink by the pool, I relax by playing around with inline [Assembly code]," as a nice quote of the day as Linus Torvalds explained after he took on improving upon a performance optimization patch that was proposed for the ongoing Linux 6.5 merge window...

The power management and ACPI feature changes have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.5 kernel. As usual, it's most interesting on the Intel and AMD fronts with the power management changes for this kernel that will be released as stable in August...

Ingo Molnar submitted today the scheduler updates destined for the Linux 6.5 kernel. Most noticeable with the CPU scheduler changes are enhancing SMP (Hyper Threading) load balancing for Intel Core CPUs of a hybrid design with a mix of P and E cores...

Blender 3.6 is out today as the latest exciting update for this open-source, cross-platform 3D modeling software. Exciting with Blender 3.6 is adding Intel hardware ray-tracing support when making use of Arc Graphics. AMD graphics cards on Windows can also enjoy HIP ray-tracing but sadly isn't supported yet for Linux...

Processing the vmlinux.o object with objtool has been the most memory intensive step of the Linux kernel build process. Prior patches have already worked to reduce this objtool memory use while compiling the Linux kernel and a big patch series now set for Linux 6.5 is set to sharply reduce the maximum heap use...

Bcachefs hopes to finally merge in Linux 6.5 while for those wanting a mature Linux file-system with all the bells and whistles, Btrfs is a good candidate worth considering. With Linux 6.5 there is a continuation of the recent Btrfs trend around performance improvements...

ReactOS is the open-source OS that's striving for Microsoft Windows software and driver binary compatibility that is 25 years in the making. ReactOS has been making steady progress while still considered in alpha form. Most of the ReactOS successes and user tinkering has been with the 32-bit build of the OS while they have been making steady progress recently on the x86_64 (x64) port...

In addition to yesterday bringing EDAC support for AMD Zen 4 client CPUs, the set of RAS "Reliability, Availability and Serviceability" updates for the Linux 6.5 kernel have separately brought initial GPU/accelerator support...

The work originating in late 2021 for bringing up secondary CPU cores in parallel at boot-time to help shorten boot/reboot times for large core count servers has finally landed with the in-development Linux 6.5 kernel...

The ARM64 (AArch64) architecture code has seen some clean-ups and support for new Arm ISA features with the in-development Linux 6.5 kernel...

If your dream is to work for Valve Software, getting experienced with the open-source Linux graphics driver development niche seems to be a decent pathway. Besides Valve, all the big hardware companies are routinely looking for more Linux graphics driver developers as well...