Phoronix

Public code reviews started this week on Qt platform support for Google's Chromium open-source browser code...

Going back to last October has been work by AMD developers in leveraging the DRM buddy allocator code started by Intel within their AMDGPU kernel driver. With the Linux 5.19 kernel this summer, AMDGPU is ready to finally make use of that buddy allocator...

Cloud-Hypervisor is the Rust-written, KVM-leveraging VMM started by Intel that is now developed under the Linux Foundation umbrella with Arm, Microsoft, and others also contributing to this project focused on cloud virtualization needs. Cloud-Hypervisor 23.0 is out today with the latest features for this increasingly capable open-source virtual machine monitor...

As anticipated the code for Mesa 22.1 has now been branched with the first release candidate imminent for this quarterly Mesa3D update...

While every few days it seems like we are writing about new DG2/Alchemist graphics code being prepared for the Linux kernel or related components like Mesa -- and it's been something going on for many months now -- knowing the actual working state of Intel Arc Graphics on Linux hasn't been exactly clear given no formal announcements/communication out of Intel yet as to Linux support expectations / version requirements and not yet having any hardware access. While much of the graphics support has been squared away for Intel Arc DG2/Alchemist as covered in prior articles, it turns out the compute support is still settling but there is now a patch series pending for actually exposing it...

Opened up at the end of March is the work-in-progress Intel oneAPI back-end for Blender's Cycles renderer. This Intel GPU back-end focused for supporting the company's forthcoming Intel Arc graphics cards is targeting the open-source oneAPI Base Toolkit and making use of SYCL. There still is more code work needed, but it's good to see this coming together to complement Blender's NVIDIA CUDA and AMD HIP support...

Being a week out past the end of the Linux 5.18 merge window, today Intel sent out their first batch of "i915" DRM graphics driver updates to DRM-Next for queuing ahead of what will be the Linux 5.19 kernel this summer. There is a lot of code churn still happening around enabling Intel's discrete graphics hardware and other open-source driver happenings...

With the dozens of 4U rackmount enclosures used at Phoronix, when it comes to the high-end desktop systems the Noctua NH-U9 series has been the go-to choice for CPU cooling. The Noctua NH-U9 series has been capable of cooling HEDT systems even with Threadripper / EPYC processors using the NH-U9 TR4-SP3 while fitting within 4U height requirements. For the Noctua NH-U9 series and other 4U compatible heatsinks they've tended to be limited to 80~92mm cooling fans due to height requirements. Noctua though recently introduced the NH-D12L as offering a dual tower CPU heatsink design capable of fitting 120mm fans and has been the focus of our recent testing.

SUSE with the openSUSE community is embarking on the development of the "Adaptable Linux Platform" (ALP) as what will eventually be the successor to SUSE Linux Enterprise 15...

While during these crazy times it feels like Fedora transitioned from Yum to DNF yesterday, it's already been a half-decade since the DNF package manager has been the default on Fedora. Next year with Fedora 38 they are looking at further evolving package management by way of MicroDNF...

LLVM 14.0 was just released last month while shipping today is already the LLVM 14.0.1 release with this point milestone coming much sooner than usual...

Red Hat continues advancing the GNU Compiler Collection's static analysis capabilities. With the upcoming GCC 12 release are yet more improvements to this still-experimental static analyzer...

With Mesa 22.1 due to be branched in the next day or so as the feature freeze for this quarterly Mesa update, Valve developer Mike Blumenkrantz has penned a new blog post outlining all of the Zink changes accomplished this cycle...

Intel via their Intel Labs organization announced last year ControlFlag for finding bugs in code using AI. Intel's ControlFlag is open-source and leverages machine learning for uncovering bugs within arbitrary code-bases. At first ControlFlag was focused on uncovering bugs within C/C++ code but with its new v1.1 release is beginning to uncover PHP bugs too...

Oracle has begun making a new version of Solaris 11.4 available for free/open-source developers and for non-production personal use. Oracle Solaris 11.4 "CBE" was announced to little fanfare last month for what many open-source OS enthusiasts will likely argue is too little, too late...

Git 2.35.2 was just released along with updates to prior series in the form of Git 2.34.2, 2.33.2, 2.32.1, 2.31.2, and 2.30.3 due to a new security issue...

The newest software addition under AMD's GPUOpen software umbrella is HIP-RT as a ray-tracing library for HIP...

When it comes to running open-source Coreboot on retail motherboards it's sadly mostly a matter of generations-old platforms like various AMD Opteron server motherboards, old ThinkPads, many generation old motherboards for out-of-date Intel CPUs, and other dated hardware. To much excitement, 3mdeb has been porting Coreboot and the Dasharo open-source firmware to the MSI PRO Z690-A motherboards... Yes, finally Coreboot on a retail and broadly available motherboard that's latest-generation!..

Ahead of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS shipping next week, a new version of their Zsys daemon/client for ZFS-based Linux installations has been issued...

Last month with the AMD EPYC 7773X Linux benchmarks and Milan-X in the Azure cloud I showed the impressive capabilities of AMD's new Milan-X processors with 768MB of L3 cache per socket (1.5GB cache per 2P server!) for a range of workloads. All of that initial benchmarking as usual was done using the default GCC system compiler across all tested AMD/Intel processors. Of course, there also exists AMD's Optimizing C/C++ Compiler (AOCC) as a downstream of LLVM/Clang with various Zen optimization patches applied. Curious about the AOCC impact for Milan-X, here are some benchmarks looking at the EPYC 7773X 2P performance across AOCC, GCC, and LLVM Clang.