
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 1 hour 52 min ago
IBM Sends Out Initial Patches For "Dense Math" Support With Future Power CPUs
IBM is working to extend Power10's MMA architecture with a new feature for "dense math" that is expected to premiere with future IBM Power processors...
AMD Sends Out Follow-Up Zen 4 Patch For The GCC Compiler
Following Znver4 being added to GCC 13 at the end of October albeit a basic implementation, out this week isa follow-up patch to begin making more adaptations to the AMD Zen 4 target...
Ampere Computing Introducing New SMpro Co-Processor Drivers With Linux 6.2
In addition to the previously-reported Ampere SMpro hardware monitoring "HWMON" driver coming for Linux 6.2, there are also at least two other drivers for Ampere's co-processor set to be introduced with this next kernel version...
GCC 13 Ends Stage 1 Development, Moves To Bug Fixing Phase
As of Monday the GCC 13 compiler has concluded its stage one feature development and has progressed onto stage three that now just focuses on bug fixing...
Linux Adding Wake-On-Connect/Disconnect For USB4 Ports
To the USB4/Thunderbolt driver in the Linux kernel Intel is adding support for system wake on connect/disconnect...
Patches Posted For GCC LTO Optimizing The Linux Kernel
Since last year when building the Linux kernel using LLVM's Clang compiler it's been possible to enable link-time optimizations (LTO) for the kernel build. Building the Linux kernel with GCC has lacked LTO support while a patch series posted today is the latest attempt to make that happen...
Ampere-1A CPU Support Added To GCC 13
Leading AArch64 server processor vendor Ampere Computing announced this summer AmpereOne as the branding for their next-generation AArch64 "cloud native" server processor design succeeding their current Ampere Altra / Ampere Altra Max processors based on Neoverse-N1. While the AmpereOne processors have yet to be formally launched, with the new AArch64 core being an original design, Ampere Computing has already been submitting support patches to the open-source compilers. The latest twist in this enablement is now acknowledging a new "Ampere-1A" variant...
Godot 4.0 Engine Adds Movie Maker Mode
In addition to the Vulkan renderer and plethora of other enhancements coming with Godot 4.0, a late v4.0 addition for this very successful open-source game engine is introducing a movie maker mode...
AMD Reveals More Details Around The Radeon RX 7900 Series / RDNA3
Earlier this month AMD announced the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX with availability set for 13 December. Meanwhile today the embargo lifts on more details surrounding the RDNA3 architecture and these new graphics cards.
Mesa's Rusticl Achieves Official OpenCL 3.0 Conformance
The latest milestone for Rusticl as Mesa's Rust-written OpenCL Gallium3D implementation is that -- when running on Intel Gen12 Xe graphics -- has reached official OpenCL 3.0 conformance as recognized by The Khronos Group...
Intel Linear Address Masking "LAM" Ready For Linux 6.2
Going back to late 2020 Intel's open-source/Linux engineers have been working on Linear Address Masking "LAM" enablement for that feature coming with future processors. With the upcoming Linux 6.2, the kernel-side enablement for Intel LAM appears to be finally wrapped up...
Sony Adds DualShock 4 Controller Support To Their Newer Linux PlayStation Driver
Going back eight years to Linux 3.15 there has been Sony DualShock 4 controller support using the "hid-sony" driver thanks to work from the open-source community. But now Sony is adding DualShock 4 controller support to their newer "hid-playstation" driver that they started for PlayStation 5 controller support and are now extending it backwards for the PS4 controller...
GCC 13 "-O2" Performance Being Sped Up With Enabling Small Loop Unrolling
For those compiling their programs using the common "-O2" optimization level as is used for the production builds by many Linux distributions and other software vendors, small loop unrolling is being enabled at this level for GCC 13. Enabling small loop unrolling with -O2 should help the performance in some areas of modern Intel and AMD CPUs...
Linux 6.2 Implementing Dynamic Shadow Call Stack Support For AArch64
The Linux kernel built with Clang has supported Shadow Call Stack "SCS: to prevent return address overwrites. With patches building up for Linux 6.2, Dynamic Shadow Call Stack is being implemented to avoid the overhead of SCS on processors supporting pointer authentication (PAC)...
Linux 6.1-rc5 Released - This Kernel May Need An Extra Week To Bake
Linux 6.1 is inching closer to its early-to-mid December stable release with Linux 6.1-rc5 having just been released...
AMD Releases AOMP 16.0-2 For Its Radeon OpenMP Offloading Compiler
In addition to AMD this week having released the AMD Optimizing C/C++ Compiler "AOCC" 4.0 as their LLVM/Clang downstream now with various optimizations for Zen 4, the company also released AOMP 16.0-2 as the newest version of their other LLVM/Clang downstream... AOMP is their downstream LLVM/Clang compiler focused on providing the latest Radeon OpenMP GPU offloading support...
openSUSE Leap Micro 5.3 RC Available For Testing
This week the release candidate of openSUSE Leap Micro 5.3 was announced for testing. The Leap Micro project is openSUSE's modern and lightweight host Linux operating system intended for edge / embedded / IoT use-cases...
OneXPlayer AMD Sensor Driver Coming For Linux 6.2
Last month I wrote about a Linux sensor driver being written for the AMD-powered OneXPlayer Mini gaming handheld device. The good news is that this driver has matured enough that it's now queued for introduction in the Linux 6.2 kernel...
Mold 1.7 Released But May Need To Change Software License If Funding Not Secured
Mold is the modern, high performance, and open-source linker taking on the likes of LLVM LLD and GNU Gold. Mold 1.7 has been released as the newest update to this very promising linker, but unfortunately the lead developer is evaluating a license change. Due to still losing money over working on it full-time, he may be forced to change the software license without obtaining sustainable funding...
Running The Open-Source Upstream V3D Driver On The Raspberry Pi 4 & Newer
As of this summer the upstream, open-source Broadcom V3D direct rendering manager kernel driver has enabled support for the Raspberry Pi 4 (and newer). With the latest mainline Linux kernel builds this means the ability to enjoy accelerated graphics on the Raspberry Pi hardware paired with the latest Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan driver code without worrying about out-of-tree patches...