Phoronix

AMD posted this morning a new Linux kernel patch series for enabling a new feature for "upcoming processors" that is almost definitively for Zen 4, continuing their work in recent weeks around more open-source patches in preparing for their next-generation processors...

When Linus Torvalds gets motivated and behind kernel changes, they tend to happen more quickly, with the latest example being the switching from the C89 language standard to C11 (GNU11). That change is now expected early on for the Linux 5.18 merge window...

Assuming nothing major comes up in the next few days, the Linux 5.17 kernel is expected to be released on Sunday. While we have been covering Linux 5.17 kernel activity already for a while prior to the merge window even getting going, here is a convenient look at some of the most interesting changes to find in this new release...

A set of 13 patches were posted overnight for improving the Intel Linux kernel graphics driver's handling of the power-savings feature Display Refresh Rate Switching (DRRS) for laptops...

MorphOS as the AmigaOS-like operating system now in development for more than two decades and targeting PowerPC hardware is out with version 3.16 as its first major release in over a year...

Mesa 22.0 is out today as the quarterly feature update to this collection of open-source OpenGL and Vulkan graphics drivers used widely by Linux systems...

Since the release at the end of February of Valve's Steam Deck there has been numerous Phoronix readers wondering about the CPU performance of the Steam Deck's AMD APU in non-gaming workloads and just how viable the Steam Deck could be for a converged device for desktop uses. Here is some commentary on that front and benchmark results.

Blender 3.1 is out today as the newest feature release to this incredibly powerful, open-source and cross-platform 3D modeling software...

As part of diversifying their supported range of Linux distributions since it was announced CentOS 8 would be going end-of-life, the popular cPanel commercial software package for easing the administration of Linux web server has added support for AlmaLinux and wit cPanel v102 is full support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS...

Microsoft has laid out a proposal whereby they are hoping to contribute support for DirectX, the HLSL shading language, and Vulkan graphics support to the upstream LLVM/Clang compiler...

AMD continues recruiting more Linux engineers to join the company not only for their EPYC server processors given the dominance of Linux on the server/HPC front but also as part of their growing Linux client ambitions covering custom SoCs using Linux from Valve's Steam Deck to the Tesla in-vehicle infotainment system over to just running AMD Ryzen processors on Linux. This is good to see given AMD's traditionally much smaller Linux pool of talent compared to Intel's massive Linux/open-source engineering headcount...

One of many promising kernel patch series at the moment for enhancing Linux kernel performance is the multi-gen LRU framework (MGLRU) devised by Google engineers. They found the current Linux kernel page reclaim code is too expensive for CPU resources and can make poor eviction choices while MGLRU aims to yield better performance. These results are quite tantalizing and MGLRU is now up to its ninth revision...

Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) as part of Intel's Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) is set to be supported as part of the upcoming Linux 5.18 kernel. Last night the IBT patch series has queued into TIP's x86/core ahead of the Linux 5.18 merge window...

PanVK as Panfrost's open-source Vulkan driver in Mesa for Arm Mali graphics hardware is seeing progress on handling compute shaders...

Godot 4.0 continues marching closer to its much anticipated release with today marking the fourth release candidate already for this open-source game engine...

Within minutes of the BHI speculative execution vulnerability going public, patches were merged into the mainline Linux kernel Git tree for mitigating this offshoot from Spectre V2. The Intel and Arm processors affected by BHI (also referred to as Spectre-BHB) have mitigation work plus a change also impacts AMD processors too...

Apple is at it again with further showing off the potential of their Arm-based Apple Silicon with today rolling out the M1 Ultra SoC...

The VUSec security researchers are today -- in cooperation with Intel -- disclosing another new speculative execution vulnerability... BHI is the name and it's an offshoot from Spectre V2...

Vulkan 1.3.207 is out as the latest routine update to this high performance graphics / compute API...

It's been well over two years since AMD introduced the Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series and subsequently introduced the Threadripper PRO 3000WX series as workstation-focused parts. Today AMD is introducing the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 WX Series as the first Zen 3 based Threadripper processors.