Phoronix

The big Linux 4.20 performance slowdown is now corrected by tonight's Linux 4.20 Git code while still providing reasonable security for cross-hyperthread Spectre V2 mitigation...

In the works now for over three years has been BCachefs that doesn't receive nearly as much attention as Btrfs, Stratis, ZFS On Linux, or other next-gen Linux storage options, but it does continue making progress and still possesses a lot of potential...

RenderDoc 1.2 is now available as the latest feature update to this leading graphics debugging tool for Vulkan, OpenGL, and Direct3D across all major platforms...

On Friday AMD's Alex Deucher sent in the latest batch of feature to work DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 4.21 cycle. This mostly included AMDGPU/AMDKFD driver updates but also a lone Radeon DRM driver fix to avoid a possible 32-bit overflow and also DRM scheduler and TTM memory management fixes...

It's been over five months already since the release of systemd 239 and a lot of feature work has been amassing for what will end up releasing as systemd 240...

While Qt 5.12 isn't even out until next week, The Qt Company has already begun formulating their early plans around Qt 5.13...

Oracle's VirtualBox 6.0 multi-platform virtualization software continues inching closer to release...

Genode, the open-source operating system framework focused on a micro-kernel layer and various innovative user-space components, is out with its latest feature update. The developers at Genode Labs also continue bringing up their Sculpt OS effort for Genode as a general purpose operating system...

Another month is in the books as we approach the 15th birthday of Phoronix in June. This month on Phoronix there was a lot of interest in the major Linux kernel slowdown that ended up being attributed to "STIBP" but fortunately improvements are on the way, a lot of interest in Raptor Computing Systems' Talos II libre system and their lower-cost Blackbird board, excitement starting to heat up around Linux 4.21 changes, and the Mesa 18.3 release being on approach while Mesa 19.0 feature development is in full swing...

In seeking to comply with the Linux kernel's new Code of Conduct enacted by the recent 4.19 release, a patch series has been sent out today replacing profane kernel code comments with "hugs"...

Ubuntu's Mir team will soon be releasing their Mir 1.1 display server release in the days ahead with this first post-1.0 stable update of this re-shifted project that has morphed into offering Wayland client support...

It should come as virtually no surprise to any regular Phoronix reader given the significant investment Intel makes to Linux via their Open-Source Technology Center with working on Mesa for their Vulkan/OpenGL drivers and related components, but their discrete GPU undertaking will support Linux gaming alongside Windows...

The release of Sway 1.0 as the popular i3-compatible Wayland compositor is one step closer with the latest beta update...

Ahead of the official release next month, KDE Applications 18.12 is now available in release candidate form for those wanting to test out this latest slew of KDE app updates...

AMD developers have a miraculous Christmas present for their open-source Linux users, particularly Linux gamers with FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync displays... This last major feature missing from AMDGPU DRM driver that's long been sought after is finally set to land in the mainline Linux kernel!..

In addition to Linux 4.21 set to land Adiantum as the crypto algorithm backed by Google following the company's falling out with the NSA's Speck crypto for low-end data encryption, Streebog is also set to be introduced as a cryptographic hash function developed in large part by the Russian government...

Released yesterday was Qt 5.12 RC2 while on track for next week is the official release of this tool-kit under its latest long-term support banner...

Mesa 18.3 release manager Emil Velikov announced the release of Mesa 18.3-RC5 on Thursday as this cycle enters overtime due to an active blocker bug...

Adding to the list of new features for GCC 9 due out early next year is a new -flive-patching= flag to help with scenarios like live Linux kernel patching...

Now queued in the networking subsystem's "-next" branch ahead of the Linux 4.21 cycle is the Aquantia AQtion driver, which is for new hardware supporting USB-based 2.5Gb and 5Gb Ethernet support...

For those sticking to the Wine stable releases, Wine 3.0.4 is out today as the latest stable point release...

AMD has just dropped a new Family 17h "Zen" microcode file for Linux users...

As it has been a while since last running some Linux I/O scheduler benchmarks, here are some fresh results while using the new Linux 4.19 stable kernel and tests carried out from a 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SATA 3.0 SSD within a 2P EPYC Dell PowerEdge R7425 Linux server...

As a smashing early Christmas gift to the open-source community, Blender 2.80 is now in beta for this widely-used open-source 3D modeling software...

While AMD is able to reproduce the Radeon RX 590 Linux failure and is currently investigating the necessary Linux driver fix(es) for getting this latest Polaris refresh graphics card working correctly, if you already upgraded and don't have the luxury of switching to another graphics card until a solution is in place, there is a workaround to getting the RX 590 on Linux with working hardware acceleration but very slow performance...

Most of those wanting an open-source, GNU/Linux-based smartphone have been looking forward to Purism's Librem 5 that will hopefully be shipping in 2019. But now a new option appears to be jumping on the scene: the Necunos Mobile developed by Necuno Solutions in cooperation with the KDE camp...

Stemming from the recent proposal about a libre GPU using a RISC-V chip running a Rust-based software renderer like a software-based Vulkan implementation, the developer appears to be ready to take on designing a quad-core RISC-V libre SoC that he believes can be competitive for mobile devices...

Adiantum is the new crypto algorithm Google is backing for disk encryption on low-end (Android) devices following their change of course regarding the controversial NSA-developed Speck algorithm earlier this year...

While Stoney Ridge was AMD's 2016 APU platform with Excavator CPU cores and GCN 1.2 graphics, the Linux support in some regards is still being settled in some areas...

While GNU Hurd is designed to go hand-in-hand with the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), there is now upstream compiler toolchain support with the more liberally licensed LLVM Clang C/C++ compiler...

QEMU 3.1.0 will be out within the next week or two depending upon any last minute blocker bugs...

It looks like open-source AMD driver developer Marek Olšák is finishing out the month by working on a few remaining extensions to benefit not only their RadeonSI driver but also the old R600g and other Mesa drivers...

For those that may have been wanting to try out Clear Linux of Intel's Open-Source Technology Center on desktops/workstation, it's now easier to do thanks to a new "desktop live" image accompanied by a new OS installer to make it more akin to conventional desktop Linux distributions...

Valve managed to ship their latest game today as planned and without any major delays...

NVIDIA has updated their Vulkan Linux beta driver series and with that finally re-based onto their current 415 release stream...

While Mesa 18.3 is due to be released in the days ahead, the Mesa 18.2 bi-weekly stable point releases are continuing for the time being and today marks the v18.2.6 release...

Monday night Amazon announced the new "A1" instance type for the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) that is powered by their own "Graviton" ARMv8 processors. Since then I have been running benchmarks on Amazon's first-generation 64-bit ARM processors and seeing how these ARM cloud instances compare to their Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC performance on EC2 in both raw performance as well as performance-per-dollar.

Last month ODROID announced an Intel-powered single board computer after their experimenting with a Ryzen SBC hadn't panned out for this company known for their high-performance ARM SBCs. The ODROID-H2 has begun shipping as this $111 USD Intel x86_64 quad-core board while for your viewing pleasure today are some initial performance benchmarks of this board...

Adding to the headaches around Linux 4.19 stable is an EXT4 file-system corruption issue that has yet to be sorted out...

When the Radeon RX 590 launched two weeks ago, Linux support wasn't anticipated to be a problem with it being yet another Polaris graphics card and largely unchanged from a driver perspective compared to the RX 580 and other Polaris cards the past few years. Sadly at least for some AIB RX 590 cards, that hasn't turned out to be the case...

For several months now the mainline LLVM Clang compiler code has offered Speculative Load Hardening (SLH) for the compiler-based approach for Spectre Variant One protection for critical software that might not be mitigated by hand against Spectre V1 vulnerabilities that can be picked up by Smatch and other utilities. The Clang compiler now has support for SLH on a function-by-function basis...

It looks like the mainline Linux 4.20 kernel within a few days will be playing nicely on more AMD hardware. In particular, the Raven Ridge Zen+Vega APUs that have been rather troublesome depending upon the BIOS/motherboard since their launch almost one year ago...

The SDL2 library commonly used by Linux/cross-platform games now has support for the Razer Raiju Mobile gaming controller...

Intel's Maarten Lankhorst has sent out another pull request of drm-misc-next changes slated for the Linux 4.21 kernel. This pull includes updates to the smaller Direct Rendering Manager drivers as well as some core changes...

At the end of last year Intel announced the Stratix 10 FPGA with HBM2 memory for HPC workloads. With the Linux 4.21 kernel cycle, the support for this hardware will be further improved upon for FPGA programming with the mainline kernel...

Similar to the GCC patch for Intel Cascade lake CPU support that was posted last week, the LLVM Clang compiler stack now supports these forthcoming Intel server CPUs...

The Linux Foundation and RISC-V Foundation are announcing a joint collaboration effort today to promote open-source development and adoption around this royalty-free CPU instruction set architecture...

Making the rounds this morning is an ASRock forum post about a motherboard accidentally and repeatedly wiping out Linux Software RAID meta-data. A few Phoronix readers have also reported similar issues such as in the forums and Twitter. This appears to stem from an UEFI issue...

In the benchmarks earlier this month looking at the Talos II POWER9 dual 22-core performance its performance was compared to various AMD Threadripper and Intel Core i9 CPUs. They were used as comparison points since all of those CPUs sport four memory channels, including the Sforza POWER9 CPUs, while IBM caters the larger LaGrange/Monza POWER9 modules with eight memory channels as competition to Xeon and EPYC. But for those wondering how the POWER9 Sforza performance compares to Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors, here are some benchmarks.

LunarG has shipped the latest version of the Vulkan SDK that pulls in support for the many recently introduced extensions from VK_NV_ray_tracing to VK_EXT_pci_bus_info and VK_EXT_transform_feedback, among other recent vendor extensions. There is also bug fixes and improved validation coverage for this Vulkan SDK...