Phoronix

As with many new Intel/AMD laptops these days, the recently launched Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen3 with AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U "Rembrandt" SoC boasts ACPI Platform Profile support that is exposed under Linux for switching between low-power, balanced (default), and performance modes. For those curious about this ACPI Platform Profile impact, here are some benchmarks from this 6850U laptop under Ubuntu Linux and its impact on power and thermal efficiency too.

Following the release of GNU Glibc 2.36 earlier this week, GNU Binutils 2.39 released today for this common set of binary utilities on open-source systems...

Dbus-Broker as a drop-in replacement for the reference D-Bus implementation while focused on better performance and reliability is out with a new version. Notable with this new Dbus-Broker 32 is the beginnings of AppArmor support that could open the door for Ubuntu Linux switching over to it in the future...

It was just over a year ago Microsoft lifted the lid further on CBL-Mariner as its internal Linux distribution used for a variety of purposes at the company from running within their Azure cloud environment to also finding use by WSL, and various other use-cases. They have continued issuing updates and expanding the capabilities of this enterprise-tasked Linux distribution...

Earlier this year AMD began posting Linux kernel patches for >a href="https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Zen-4-IBS-Linux">Instruction Based Sampling (IBS) extensions coming with Zen 4 processors. With Linux 5.19 the Zen 4 IBS extensions landed while now with Linux 6.0 the perf tools have been updated for dealing with Zen 4 IBS...

The XFS file-system may be getting up there in age but there are no signs of it slowing down but rather the opposite -- continued scalability work and performance optimizations -- as well as tacking on new features. With Linux 6.0, the mature XFS continues to age well. Separately, the EXT4 file-system updates have also landed in Linux 6.0...

AMDVLK 2022.Q3.2 was released by AMD overnight as their newest official open-source Vulkan driver release for Linux systems...

Greg Kroah-Hartman has submitted all of the USB and Thunderbolt driver changes targeting the Linux 6.0 kernel of which there is a lot of new hardware enablement and enhancements to existing driver support...

There are a few notable changes worth mentioning when it comes to KVM virtualization with Linux 6.0...

Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS had been due for release today but has now been pushed back by one week after discovering an installer issue that led to Snaps like the default Mozilla Firefox browser failing to launch once installed...

With Linux 6.0 having some big scheduler changes and tuning that should specifically benefit AMD Zen systems, I've been eager to see how some high core count EPYC servers will benefit from this next version of the Linux kernel. While just a few days into the Linux 6.0 merge window, here are some early benchmarks showing some of the areas where Linux 6.0 is allowing higher performance out of existing AMD EPYC 7003 series hardware...

AMD recently started posting Linux patches for a Platform Management Framework "PMF" driver that is designed to "enhance end user experience by making AMD PCs smarter, quieter, power efficient by adapting to user behavior and environment."..

With there recently being a number of new driver proposals for various AI-focused accelerators for the Linux kernel, currently they either go into "char/misc" as the random catch-all area of the kernel or within the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem traditionally used for GPU drivers. There's been yet another discussion happening this week over introducing a formal "accelerator" subsystem in the kernel for the growing number of AI devices that may be seeking to provide open-source drivers...

Back in 2020 with Linux 5.11 Intel SGX support was finally merged after undergoing 40+ revisions over the span of years. Fortunately, not taking as long is now Intel SGX2 support that is set to be mainlined with the new Linux 6.0 kernel...

Vulkan 1.3.224 was released earlier today and with this spec update comes VK_EXT_attachment_feedback_loop_layout as another extension started by Valve developers and will help their Steam Play (Proton) efforts...

It took longer than expected but NVIDIA's CUDA is out with an update providing official support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0...

A lot of great features are landing for Linux 6.0 but two more are now confirmed to partake in this next major kernel version: Multi-Gen LRU (MGLRU) and the Maple Leaf data structure...

In addition to continuing to ramp up their Steam Deck production to fulfill existing pre-order reservations this calendar year thanks to addressing supply chain bottlenecks, Valve announced today that in partnership with Komodo they are bringing this Linux-powered gaming console to Asian markets...

After a few week delay to allow additional features to land, feature development on Mesa 22.2 has ended with Mesa 22.2-rc1 now being available ahead of its stable release in the coming weeks...

Over the past two years Google has been spearheading an effort to make silicon design more open-source and allowing more projects to get started in chip fabrication. That got started with a partnership with SkyWater Technology and Google covering the costs for open-source projects to see their initial chips fabricated on a 130nm process. Google's Open-Source Silicon Design Initiative recently announced SkyWater 90mm manufacturing will get underway for future manufacturing runs. Today the news out of Google's open-source group is that GlobalFoundries has joined this initiative and is providing 180nm manufacturing access...