In addition to the EEVDF scheduler replacing the CFS code in Linux 6.6, another fundamental and interesting change with Linux 6.6 is on the workqueue (WQ) side with a rework that can benefit systems with multiple L3 caches like modern AMD chiplet-based systems...
In addition to all the open-source kernel graphics/display driver updates for Linux 6.6, merged this afternoon ahead of the Linux 6.6-rc1 tagging is merging of the DRM continuous integration (CI) code to hopefully lead to better testing of DRM subsystem/driver changes...
With Linux 6.6 the KSMBD server is no longer "experimental" while this new kernel on the SMB3 client side also brings a notable addition: the new "dir_cache_timeout" option to control the cache time for directory contents...
Mike Blumenkrantz working for Valve's Linux graphics driver team has added implicit sync support to the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver, which in turn now opens this generic driver up for correctly providing GLAMOR rendering with X11 and XWayland environments...
While last week saw the main set of power management updates for the Linux 6.6 kernel, this week a follow-on pull request was submitted -- and merged -- with a few last minute additions...
The LoongArch CPU port is seeing a number of new kernel features enabled with Linux 6.6 as well as seeing some new hardware features wired up such as for Loongson Binary Translation (LBT) and allowing LSX/LASX instruction use in kernel-space...
Back in 2021 Samsung engineers posted KSMBD as an in-kernel SMB3 server alternative to the likes of the user-space Samba server. KSMBD merged into Linux 5.15 as an experimental SMB server while after two years of fixes and other improvements has now dropped its "experimental" marking...
A new version of DXVK-NVAPI is now available, the NVIDIA public NVAPI interface implemented atop DXVK for use by Direct3D games running on Valve's Steam Play (Proton). DXVK-NVAPI allows for NVIDIA DLSS for Vulkan / D3D11 / D3D12, NVIDIA Reflex support, PhysX, and other NVIDIA features to be enabled for popular Windows games running on Linux...
FreeBSD 14 Beta 1 is available this weekend for helping to test out this major BSD operating system update that should debut as stable before the end of October...
Earlier this year I wrote about Microsoft working on their first Vulkan extension and today it finally debuted within the Vulkan 1.3.264 spec update...
With the recently released Linux 6.5 kernel bringing AMD P-State EPP by default for modern Ryzen systems rather than the generic ACPI CPUFreq driver, running Linux 6.5 (or newer) in various workloads can lead to improved performance and/or power efficiency. Curious about the impact on the mobile side, I recently carried out some benchmarks of the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld with AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC from Linux 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, and 6.6 Git kernels.
In addition to the ASUS laptop improvements for Linux 6.6 with the ASUS-WMI driver, additional feature work is on the way for future kernel versions with one of those interesting additions being support for the ASUS Screenpad. Some higher-end ASUS laptops feature a secondary screen "screenpad" on the laptops and the pending ASUS-WMI driver patch will properly support it...
Since early this year AMD has been working on Linux enablement patches for Dynamic Boost Control (DBC). This is a new feature of some AMD SoCs that allow an "authenticated entity" to have greater control over certain SoC characteristics to improve the power/performance. AMD DBC was merged for Linux 6.6 just days ago while already new patches have been posted that extend the supported platforms for this Dynamic Boost Control functionality...
While we've been looking forward to Bcachefs landing and carrying out a fresh round of performance testing of Bcachefs against other file-system options, it's looking clear now that Bcachefs won't be landing for the Linux 6.6 merge window...
OpenZFS 2.2 has been in the works to provide Linux container support, BLAKE3 checksumming, block cloning and other new features. It's looking like that release will be wrapped up soon while released on Thursday was v2.2-rc4 to help encourage last minute testing of this file-system driver for Linux and FreeBSD systems...
As a big win for Intel's QuickAssist Technology (QAT) accelerator found as an option with Sapphire Rapids processors and prior QAT hardware, there's been a QAT Zstd plug-in to provide big performance/efficiency benefits. Version 0.1 of that plug-in was released today...
In addition to the notable sound changes that merged last week for Linux 6.6 that included AMD VanGogh SOF support and enablement around a Valve "Galileo" device, sent in via the MFD pull request this week is work enabling the new Cirrus Logic CS42L43 audio codec...
Merged a few days ago for the ongoing Linux 6.6 merge window were the x86 platform driver updates, which bring a few interesting Intel/AMD laptop improvements as well as a new driver to support altering select HP BIOS settings from within the confines of Linux...
As covered in the launch-day Radeon RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT Linux review/testing, there is already upstream open-source driver support for these new RDNA3 graphics cards in recent versions of the Linux kernel and Mesa. It's a pleasant open-source out-of-the-box experience with the Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards with the possible exception of just needing to grab the recent AMDGPU firmware. But for those running older, enterprise Linux distribution releases, AMD has now released the Radeon Software for Linux 23.20 driver package to also enable the RX 7700/7800 XT support on those enterprise operating systems...
As an experimental feature for next month's Ubuntu 23.10 release, Canonical is introducing initial support for TPM-based full disk encryption to make use of your system's Trusted Platform Module (TPM). The downside though is this extra security relies on Snaps, including for the kernel and GRUB bootloader...
AMD today published version 1.2 of their Unified Inference Frontend (UIF) that is for supporting deep learning inference across AMD CPUs, GPUs, as well as Versal adaptive SoCs and FPGAs. AMD UIF aims to accelerate AI inference across all AMD compute platforms with machine learning frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow. With UIF 1.2 adds initial support for Radeon GPUs...
As part of a monthly status update concerning Plasma 6 development, KDE developer Nate Graham confirmed that the team is planning to release Plasma 6.0 in February of 2024...
Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan Linux driver has landed a set of 15 patches that can further help the Linux gaming performance for those using DG2/Alchemist Arc Graphics...
The first alpha release of the OpenSSL 3.2 library is now available for testing. With OpenSSL 3.2 there are a number of new features, most notably the client-side work around QUIC support...
Going along with the MSM DRM driver support for the Qualcomm Adreno 700 series, the open-source TURNIP Vulkan driver this week merged its initial support for the Adreno 700 series...
In addition to the HID updates bringing rumble for Google's Stadia controller and other gaming peripheral improvements, the input subsystem updates were sent out this week for Linux 6.6 that bring more enhancements for Linux gamers. In particular, the common XPad driver saw some additions for this next kernel version...
A few days ago Bcachefs was proposed for inclusion to Linux 6.6 after it failed to be pulled for the prior Linux 6.5 kernel cycle. Since then we've been waiting to see what action Linus Torvalds would take with including Bcachefs... He's finally commented on it today but remains to be seen if it will land for this kernel release...
Igalia developers are working on extending the Broadcom V3D DRM kernel graphics driver, which is most notably used by the latest Raspberry Pi devices, to support the notion of "CPU jobs" in kernel space to assist in their Vulkan support. These CPU jobs are for assisting the support where their Broadcom GPU driver isn't capable of some Vulkan commands and thus needs to be punted off and handled by the processor...
The Ceph changes were submitted today for the ongoing Linux 6.6 merge window and with it comes one big shiny feature addition: support for making use of the FSCRYPT file-system encryption framework...
The release candidates were tagged this morning of GNOME Shell and Mutter ahead of the "GNOME 45.rc" test release coming out within the next few days. With the release candidates are some last-minute changes worth mentioning...
Last month AMD announced the Radeon RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT graphics cards while today these graphics cards go on sale for $449 and $499 USD, respectively. Today also marks the review embargo lift so I'm now able to talk about the Linux support and performance for these new RDNA3 graphics cards that are designed for 1440p gaming,
On the AMD CPU side of the house, one of the patch series we are looking forward to seeing upstreamed in the Linux kernel is the AMD Preferred Core functionality that was initially sent out this summer. This AMD Preferred Core handling is built onto the AMD P-State driver and has been undergoing a few rounds of iteration with the latest "v5" patches having been posted this week...
The Linux 6.6 FUSE driver code for enabling file-systems in user-space is adding support for STATX to the protocol as part of focusing on enabling file birth time "btime" support...
Greg Kroah-Hartman last Friday sent out the "char/misc" changes for the Linux 6.6 kernel merge window that include the catch-all of different driver changes. This cycle the char/misc updates aren't particularly exciting but the Intel PECI updates do stand-out...
While this summer has been a busy season of benchmarking with the new AMD EPYC Bergamo processors providing up to 128-cores / 256-threads per socket and the new EPYC Genoa-X parts providing up to 1.1GB of L3 cache with 3D V-Cache to provide for excellent HPC performance, not everyone needs such levels of performance nor having the budget for such platforms. It's always fun talking about the high-end server platforms, but at the opposite end AMD and their platform partners have been rolling out an equally interesting assortment of AMD Ryzen 7000 series based server products. With the Ryzen 9 7950X/7950X3D providing up to 16-cores / 32-threads, a growing number of Ryzen server motherboards supporting DDR5 ECC UDIMM, and a number of innovative Ryzen server platforms coming to market, it's an interesting time to be after a budget-friendly server platform or other robust rackmount systems where looking for power efficient 16 cores or less configurations.
Ahead of Intel expecting to formally reveal more Meteor Lake processor details in the coming weeks, Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers are ready to declare the new integrated graphics stable with the upstream Linux kernel -- dropping the existing flag that treated them as experimental and not enabled by default unless passing a special kernel module parameter...
Masahiro Yamada submitted today all of the Kconfig feature updates targeting the Linux 6.6 merge window. Most notable with the Kconfig work is the "make xconfig" GUI seeing a port for Qt6 toolkit compatibility...
Mesa 23.2 was supposed to have been released by now following a series of weekly release candidates that started in mid-July when feature work ended. After a five week hiatus, Mesa 23.2-rc3 is now available for testing...
AMD by way of their Xilinx acquisition has been running the Open Hardware Competition since 2015 for helping to drive new innovations around FPGAs and the ACAP compute platform. The winners of the AMD Open Hardware Competition 2023 were recently announced...
PoCL began as an open-source project providing a CPU-based OpenCL implementation and over the years has added support for various LLVM back-ends such as for targeting AMD HSA, Intel Level Zero, and NVIDIA CUDA/PTX with its OpenCL implementation. The latest back-end merged ahead of Portable Computing Language 5.0 is a remote back-end that allows for OpenCL codes to be transparently utilized on networked systems for distributed computing...
Following Intel's acquisition of Tower Semiconductor falling through due to failing to obtain all the necessary regulatory approvals, Intel and Tower today announced a foundry agreement...
The sound subsystem and audio driver updates were merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.6 merge window. Interesting about the sound work this cycle is a fair amount of work around AMD Van Gogh platforms, which so far is just the APU that's known to power Valve's Steam Deck...
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