Open-source News

AMD PSF Control Support Still Awaiting The Mainline Linux Kernel

Phoronix - Thu, 06/24/2021 - 01:45
It's been three months since AMD published a security whitepaper outlining the possibility of a side channel attack with PSF. The Predictive Store Forwarding functionality is new to AMD Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000 / EPYC 7003 series) processors and as part of their security analysis they are allowing users the ability to opt-out of using this feature in the name of greater security but the feature still hasn't been picked up for the mainline Linux kernel...

Work-In-Progress RadeonSI+Nine Showing Big Performance Win For Source Engine Games

Phoronix - Wed, 06/23/2021 - 23:27
While Valve has been working on Vulkan-based rendering for Source Engine games by making use of DXVK for translating the game engine's native Direct3D calls to the Vulkan API, with some yet-to-be-merged Mesa patches around Gallium Nine there is much better performance to see with Gallium Nine at least for the RadeonSI driver...

Canonical Partners With Blender Around Paid LTS Application Support

Phoronix - Wed, 06/23/2021 - 22:31
Ubuntu maker Canonical has partnered up with the Blender Foundation to offer paid enterprise support around the long-term support versions of Blender...

Qt 6.2 Alpha Released With Many More Modules Ported From Qt5

Phoronix - Wed, 06/23/2021 - 20:09
The Qt Company has announced the debut of Qt 6.2 Alpha as it prepares for its September release with many more modules finally making the transition from Qt5 to Qt6...

Linux 5.14 To Support The OpenPOWER Microwatt Soft CPU Core

Phoronix - Wed, 06/23/2021 - 19:00
Announced two years ago was the OpenPOWER Microwatt as an FPGA-based soft CPU core...

Left 4 Dead 2 Vulkan Performance With Radeon Graphics On Linux

Phoronix - Wed, 06/23/2021 - 17:45
Last week Valve introduced Vulkan rendering support for Left 4 Dead 2. The L4D2 Vulkan support is similar to that of Portal 2 where DXVK is being leveraged for translating the Direct3D calls to Vulkan rather than relying on their OpenGL translations. For those wondering what this means for L4D2 performance on Linux with modern GPUs, here are some benchmarks of Left 4 Dead 2 when testing the OpenGL and Vulkan rendering options.

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