
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 25 min 52 sec ago
The Gaming Performance Impact From The Intel JCC Erratum Microcode Update
This morning I provided a lengthy look at the performance impact of Intel's JCC Erratum around the CPU microcode update issued for Skylake through Cascade Lake for mitigating potentially unpredictable behavior when jump instructions cross cache lines. Of the many benchmarks shared this morning in that overview, there wasn't time for any gaming tests prior to publishing. Now with more time passed, here is an initial look at how the Linux gaming performance is impacted by the newly-released Intel CPU microcode for this Jump Conditional Code issue.
Intel's Linux Graphics Driver Updated For Denial Of Service + Privilege Escalation Bugs
Of the 77 security advisories Intel is making public and the three big ones of the performance-sensitive JCC Erratum, the new ZombieLoad TAA (TSX Asynchronous Abort), and iTLB Multihit No eXcuses, there are also two fixes to their kernel graphics driver around security issues separate from the CPU woes...
Linux Kernel Gets Mitigations For TSX Aync Abort Plus Another New Issue: iITLB Multihit
The Linux kernel has just received its mitigation work for the newly-announced TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA) variant of ZombieLoad plus revealing mitigations for another Intel CPU issue... So today in addition to the JCC Erratum and ZombieLoad TAA the latest is iITLB Multihit (NX) - No eXcuses...
New ZombieLoad Side-Channel Attack Variant: TSX Asynchronous Abort
In addition to the JCC erratum being made public today and that performance-shifting Intel microcode update affecting Skylake through Cascade Lake, researchers also announced a new ZombieLoad side-channel attack variant dubbed "TSX Asynchronous Abort" or TAA for short...
Benchmarks Of JCC Erratum: A New Intel CPU Bug With Performance Implications On Skylake Through Cascade Lake
Intel is today making public the Jump Conditional Code (JCC) erratum. This is a bug involving the CPU's Decoded ICache where on Skylake and derived CPUs where unpredictable behavior could happen when jump instructions cross cache lines. Unfortunately addressing this error in software comes with a performance penalty but ultimately Intel engineers are working to offset that through a toolchain update. Here are the exclusive benchmarks out today of the JCC erratum performance impact as well as when trying to recover that performance through the updated GNU Assembler.
Mozilla + Intel + Red Hat Form The Bytecode Alliance To Run WebAssembly Everywhere
Mozilla, Fastly, Intel, and Red Hat have announced the Bytecode Alliance as a new initiative built around WebAssembly and focused on providing a secure-by-default bytecode that can run from web browsers to desktops to IoT/embedded platforms...
LinuxBoot Continues Maturing - Now Able To Boot Windows
LinuxBoot is approaching two years of age as the effort led by Facebook and others for replacing some elements of the system firmware with the Linux kernel...
Librsvg Continues Rust Conquest, Pulls In CSS Parsing Code From Mozilla Servo
For about three years now GNOME's SVG rendering library has been transitioning to Rust. This library, librsvg, now makes further use of Rust around its CSS parsing code and Mozilla's Servo is doing some of that heavy lifting...
Coreboot Support Is Being Worked On For Fwupd/LVFS
In making it more easy to update Coreboot system firmware, the ability to update Coreboot via the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) with Fwupd is finally being worked out...
Qualcomm's Adreno 640 GPU Is Working Easily With The Freedreno OpenGL/Vulkan Drivers
The Adreno 640 GPU that is used by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855/855+ SoCs is now working with the open-source Freedreno Gallium3D OpenGL and "TURNIP" Vulkan drivers with the newest Mesa 20.0 development code...
Intel's Vulkan Linux Driver Lands Timeline Semaphore Support
A change to look forward to with Mesa 20.0 due out next quarter is Vulkan timeline semaphore support (VK_KHR_timeline_semaphore) for Intel's "ANV" open-source driver...
GStreamer Conference 2019 Videos Now Available Online
Taking place at the end of October during the Linux Foundation events in Lyon, France was the GStreamer Conference to align with the annual developer festivities...
KDE Frameworks 5.64 Released
Sunday marked the release of KDE Frameworks 5.64 as the latest monthly update to this collection of libraries complementing Qt5...
Google Chrome To Begin Marking Sites That Are Slow / Fast
Chrome has successfully shamed web-sites not supporting HTTPS and now they are looking to call-out websites that do not typically load fast...
The Disappointing Direction Of Linux Performance From 4.16 To 5.4 Kernels
With the Linux 5.4 kernel set to be released in the next week or two, here is a look at the performance going back to the days of Linux 4.16 from early 2018. At least the Linux kernel continues picking up many new features as due to security mitigations and other factors the kernel performance continues trending lower.
SUSE Continues Working On Linux Core Scheduling For Better Security
SUSE and other companies like DigitalOcean have been working on Linux core scheduling to make virtualization safer particularly in light of security vulnerabilities like L1TF and MDS. The core scheduling work is about ensuring different VMs don't share a HT sibling but rather only the same VM / trusted applications run on siblings of a core...
Pre-Loaded Linux PCs Continue Increasing - TUXEDO Computers Sets Up New Offices
From System76 setting up their own manufacturing facility for Linux desktops to Dell offering more Linux laptop options, the demand for pre-loaded Linux PCs continues to increase. One of the smaller Linux PC vendors also now expanding is German-based TUXEDO Computers...
Shortwave Enters Beta As New GNOME Internet Radio Player
Shortwave is a new Internet radio player built for GNOME with GTK3 and has been in development the past year...
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Continuing To Work On Python 2 Removal
The goal for Ubuntu 20.04 is to ship with Python 2 removed since Py2 will be end-of-life after the after the start of the year and this next Ubuntu Linux release is a Long-Term Support release, but there still are many Python 2 depending packages left currently in Debian unstable and Ubuntu's "Focal Fossa" archive...
Arch Linux Updates Its Kernel Installation Handling
Arch Linux has updated the behavior when installing the linux, linux-lts, linux-zen, and linux-hardened kernel options on this popular distribution...