Phoronix

POCL as the "Portable Computing Language" that implements OpenCL and allows it to function atop CPUs as well as CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPUs, HSA-supported AMD GPUs, and other possible back-ends, is preparing for a new feature release...

While we have been looking out for Radeon ROCm 4.0 that was announced back at SC20 as well as an updated ROCm for providing the RDNA2 compute support only found currently in their packaged RX 6800 series Linux driver, ROCm 3.10 arrived on Wednesday as an unexpected twist...

In working towards the March release of GNOME 40, the Mutter compositor / window manager is out today with its 40 Alpha release...

For those wondering what the current cost is to the default Spectre mitigation protections on the new AMD Ryzen 5000 series "Zen 3" processors, here are a set of performance tests looking at that overhead with the still relevant mitigations applied by default and then if forcing them off. The Zen 3 mitigation overhead was compared then to similar AMD Zen 2 and Zen+ processors.

The Syscall User Dispatch support looks like it should be mainlined for the Linux 5.11 kernel. This functionality is important for modern Windows games running on Linux under Wine / Proton...

DXVK 1.7.3 is out as the latest stable update to this project implementing the Direct3D APIs atop Vulkan for accelerating the Linux gaming experience...

While Intel engineers over the course of the year began upstreaming various elements of the Keem Bay SoC support, the actual Vision Processing Unit (VPU) enabling hasn't been sent out for review until now. Intel has sent out their initial patches for bringing up the Vision Processing Unit on the open-source Linux kernel...

Bcachefs was sent out for another round of review at the end of October. While it doesn't look like this file-system born out of Linux's block cache code will be mainlined in the immediate near future, it's still on a nice trajectory...

Outreachy interns have been announced for the winter 2020 round. Selected participants are working on various open-source tasks from December through March in exchange for a $5,500 USD stipend to become involved with open-source...

Valve has just updated their Steam Survey results for November, showing how the Linux gaming marketshare continues to evolve during this pandemic-driven year...

Last month the Microsoft-backed Direct3D 12 Gallium3D driver was merged into Mesa 21.0. This is the driver for allowing graphics/compute APIs like OpenGL and OpenCL to run on top of Direct3D with Windows 10. That work to the Gallium D3D12 code has been continuing with the start of the cross-platform code now being merged...

Following Tuesday's disclosure of more X.Org Server security bugs, X.Org Server 1.20.10 was released that provides those input fixes plus a number of other patches that have been back-ported and accumulated in the 1.20 series...

NVIDIA is working on allowing their proprietary driver to support passing buffers as DMA-BUF. In turn this should allow for better supporting their proprietary driver on Wayland compared to the EGLStreams mess...

Xe HP is Intel's discrete GPU aiming to compete against the latest-generation AMD and NVIDIA compute accelerators. Xe HP isn't scheduled to reach general availability until well into 2021 while now as they begin ramping up their sampling of Xe HP to potential customers, the Linux open-source driver support is preparing to roll-out...

Back in July SUSE announced its intention to acquire Rancher Labs. That deal has now closed for acquiring the Kubernetes focused cloud company...

Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative has uncovered two more security issues with the aging X.Org Server that as we roll into 2021 is still powering most of the Linux desktops...

NVIDIA tomorrow is launching the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with their Founder's Edition card and AIB variants are also expected. For about $400 USD, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti offers performance comparable or slightly faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER and especially much stronger performance for compute and RTX workloads. With the review embargo now lifted a day ahead of the launch, here are the initial Linux benchmarks of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti under Ubuntu Linux.

Well known open-source AMD Linux graphics driver developer Marek Olšák has just merged one of his largest set of optimizations in recent times: 2~5x faster performance for SPECViewPerf...

Linux Mint recently began developing a new open-source Linux IPTV player. That project "Hypnotix" is moving ahead and will be integrated with Linux Mint 20.1 while is also available as a standalone Debian package...

The momentum of WireGuard continues with FreeBSD now having mainlined their port of this open-source secure VPN tunnel...