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Linux Performance, Benchmarks & Open-Source News - Phoronix

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Arm China Looking At Upstreaming Their “Zhouyi” NPU Driver Into The Linux Kernel
Arm China is looking at upstreaming their “Zhouyi” NPU driver into the Linux kernel via the recently-created accelerator “accel” subsystem. The Arm China Neural Processing Unit (NPU) driver in its current form has both an open-source kernel and user-space stack… ⌘ Read more

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Flatpak 1.15.7 Will Now Automatically Remove Obsolete Driver Versions
Simon McVittie issued the Flatpak 1.15.7 pre-release on Wednesday with a few notable changes for this widely-used open-source app sandboxing and distribution framework… ⌘ Read more

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More Efficient VirtIO DRM Driver To Import Scanout Buffers From Other Devices
Patches posted today by an Intel engineer allow for importing scanout buffers from other devices with the VirtIO DRM driver that is used in the virtualization space. The importing of scanout buffers from other devices/drivers can allow for more efficient use by avoiding excess copies… ⌘ Read more

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EROFS Drops “Experimental” Warning For FSDAX With Linux 6.9
Adding to the Linux 6.9 features is a minor post merge window change: the read-only EROFS file-system is no longer treading its FSDAX support as experimental… ⌘ Read more

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Reverse-Engineered Rockchip NPU Driver Hitting Same Performance As Proprietary Driver
Open-source developer Tomeu Vizoso recently began the effort of creating an open-source, reverse-engineered driver for the Rockchip NPU found in some of the latest Rockchip SoCs. After succeeding at open-source NPU driver support for the VeriSilicon NPU IP, Vizoso took up the challenge of working on Rockchip NPU support. With his open-source user-space driver he’s already got his first model running. Not only is it running but … ⌘ Read more

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Google Cloud’s C3D Instances Provide Strong Performance Value For PingCAP’s TiDB
Some time ago I ran through a number of benchmarks of Google Cloud’s C3D VMs powered by AMD EPYC Genoa processors. The AMD EPYC 9004 series showed terrific performance with strong generational improvements over the Intel Xeon Scalable processors. Following that a request came in to examine the PingCAP TiDB database performance given its growing popularity. In this article we’ll review those benchmarks showing how GCE C3D delivers stro … ⌘ Read more

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Samba 4.20 Released With WSP Search Client, Service Witness Protocol
Samba 4.20 is out as the newest feature update to this free software implementation for SMB networking protocol support and others to enhance file/print interoperability with Microsoft Windows systems… ⌘ Read more

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Pop!_OS Upgrades To The Linux 6.8 Kernel
Besides its desktop-level customizations, further differentiating System76’s Pop!_OS Linux distribution from its Ubuntu LTS package base is the tendency to roll down newer versions of the upstream Linux kernel once validated across System76’s portfolio of laptops and desktops. The latest on that front is Pop!_OS now shipping with the fresh Linux 6.8 stable series… ⌘ Read more

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SDL3 Will Keep Wayland Default At Least For The Time Being
Following several days of discussions from both sides of the table over whether SDL 3.0 should revert its Wayland over X11 preference in light of some aspects of the Wayland ecosystem support not being in good shape, for now at least SDL 3.0 is sticking to the Wayland support by default. It may be revisited though closer to release to see how the upstream support is for users of this hardware/software abstraction library widely used by cross-platfo … ⌘ Read more

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Canonical Continues Exploring Ubuntu x86-64-v3 Images - Now In Microsoft’s Cloud
Ubuntu maker Canonical has spent the past several months exploring Ubuntu x86-64-v3 based images for leveraging the x86_64 micro-architecture feature level capabilities to target the level embracing AVX/AVX2, FMA, BMI2, and other instructions supported largely since Intel Haswell and AMD Excavator era processors. As shown in benchmarks Ubuntu x86-64-v3 builds can deliver better performance for the AMD/Intel systems of the past … ⌘ Read more

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Blender 4.1 Benchmarks Confirm Even Faster CPU Render Times Under Linux
Blender has long enjoyed faster CPU rendering under Linux compared to using Microsoft Windows. Across many different processors over the years consistently we see faster Linux CPU render performance than under Windows, though that’s typically the case for most renderers. With yesterday’s release of Blender 4.1, there is even faster Linux CPU render speeds. Here are some initial Blender 4.0 vs. 4.1 benchmarks… ⌘ Read more

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RHEL 9.4 Beta Brings Full Support For Intel SGX & DSA Accelerator Drivers
Red Hat has made the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 Beta available to their customers this week for those wanting to test the next iteration of RHEL9… ⌘ Read more

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Microsoft Engineer Sends Rust Linux Kernel Patches For In-Place Module Initialization
What a time we live in where Microsoft not only continues contributing significantly to the Linux kernel but doing so to further flesh out the design of the Linux kernel’s Rust programming language support. A previously unimaginable combination of Microsoft, the Rust programming language, and the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

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Intel Xe Developers Begin Looking At Cross-Device & Cross-Driver HMM
The Intel open-source engineers working on the modern Xe DRM kernel graphics driver have begun looking at Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM) support for cross-device and cross-driver scenarios as the latest exciting feature work for this still-experimental driver… ⌘ Read more

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TornadoVM v1.0.3 OpenJDK/GraalVM Plug-In For Java Heterogeneous Hardware Support
TornadoVM is the OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in that opens up the Java programming language to heterogeneous hardware support by allowing the easy targeting of Java code to TornadoVM targets including OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and SPIR-V – in addition to CPUs. With the SPIR-V and OpenCL support in turn this means Java can run not only on GPUs but also some FPGAs and other devices… ⌘ Read more

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Zstd 1.5.6 Released - Celebrating Google Chrome Support For Zstandard Encoding
Meta’s Yann Collet just released Zstd 1.5.6 as the newest version of this Zstandard compression implementation. This release is driven in part by Google Chrome 123 adding support for Zstd encoding for web traffic. Chrome now allows Zstandard (zstd) for the content-encoding to speed-up page load speeds and bandwidth savings… ⌘ Read more

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Blender 4.1 Released With Faster Linux CPU Rendering & AMD RDNA3 APU Support
Blender 4.1 is officially out today as the newest version of this wildly popular, open-source and cross-platform 3D modeling software… ⌘ Read more

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SDL Developers Weigh Reverting Wayland Over X11 For SDL 3.0
With the SDL library that’s widely-used by cross-platform games with the current SDL 3.0 development code it prefers Wayland over X11, but a new pull request would temporarily revert that on the basis of the Wayland ecosystem still not being up to par… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Deprecates The EXT2 File-System Driver
While Linux 6.9 brings many great changes and new features / hardware support, on the deprecation side it’s deprecating the classic EXT2 file-system driver… ⌘ Read more

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Intel Adds Linux Driver PCI IDs For Arc Graphics A750E & A580E
Intel has sent out driver patches today for adding two additional PCI IDs to the DG2/Alchemist family for their Xe and i915 Linux kernel graphics drivers… ⌘ Read more

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Linux Enabling Shadow Stack Support For x32
Back in Linux 6.6 the Shadow Stack support was finally merged as part of Intel’s Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET). This years-in-the-making effort allows for better defending against ROP attacks for newer generations of Intel processors. For Linux 6.10, Shadow Stack support is being extended to x32… ⌘ Read more

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Intel VA-API 2.21 Library Adds Intel Xe Kernel Driver Support, AV1 & Windows Fixes
Intel engineers that maintain the common VA-API library “libva” today released version 2.21 with several fixes and additions for this Video Acceleration API support… ⌘ Read more

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Panthor DRM Driver Queued For Linux 6.10 To Support Newer Arm Mali GPUs
The open-source Panthor DRM driver for supporting newer Arm Mali GPUs was queued in drm-misc-next at the start of March ahead of the Linux 6.9 merge window. It ultimately though didn’t see a drm-misc-next pull to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.9 merge window and thus being held off until the Linux 6.10 cycle. This week though that drm-misc-next submission to DRM-Next took place as that driver and other changes begin queuing for Linux 6.10… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Features: DM VDO, AMD Preferred Core, Intel FRED & Larger Console Fonts
Now that Linux 6.9-rc1 was released on Sunday to mark the end of the merge window, here is a look at all of the new features that have been merged for the Linux 6.9 kernel cycle. ⌘ Read more

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Canonical Extends Ubuntu LTS Support To 12 Years For Ubuntu Pro Customers
Ubuntu Long-Term Support (LTS) releases have been support for 10 years of updates by Canonical while now that has been extended to 12 years but only for Ubuntu Pro customers going for their legacy support add-on. This 12 year support is extended retroactively going back to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Features: DM VDO, AMD Preferred Core, Intel FRED & Larger Console Fonts
Now that Linux 6.9-rc1 was released on Sunday to mark the end of the merge window, here is a look at all of the new features that have been merged for the Linux 6.9 kernel cycle. ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Will Boot Much Faster For Systems With Large Amounts Of RAM
The Linux 6.9 kernel will be able to boot systems with large amounts of memory – and in particular making use of HugeTLB pages – much faster than with previous kernels, netting a noticeable reduction in boot times… ⌘ Read more

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Mesa 24.1 Merges AMD Radeon VPE 1.1 Engine Support
AMD open-source Linux driver patches posted last summer enabled the new “VPE” IP block as a general purpose copy engine for future AMD GPUs. This VPE block might premiere in the upcoming AMD RDNA3.5 refresh (RDNA3+) integrated graphics but in any event AMD is already working on the incrementally improved VPE 1.1 IP with that now being supported by the Mesa 24.1 RadeonSI driver code… ⌘ Read more

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Tiny Corp Changes Course Yet Again With Plans To Offer AMD Radeon GPUs
It was just last week that Tiny Corp put their AMD Radeon graphics powered compute boxes “on hold” after being frustrated with the lack of select firmware source code and ultimately hitting various bugs. This wasn’t the first time they had put their AMD Radeon graphics plans on-hold or dismissed it outright. With the start of the new week now comes plans to re-introduce an AMD Radeon graphics option for their compute boxes alongside their rece … ⌘ Read more

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XWayland-Run 0.0.3 Adds Support For KDE’s KWin
Since last year Red Hat engineers have been developing xwayland-run and wlheadless-run for spawning X11 clients within its own dedicated XWayland rootful instance and for running a Wayland client on a set of supported Wayland headless compositors, respectively. The intent is on improving the Wayland headless experience as well as being able to get classic X11 sessions up and running via rootful XWayland. Out today is the XWayland-Run v0.0.3 release… ⌘ Read more

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SysVinit 3.09 Now Allows Building With musl C Library, Passing Boot Messages To Firmware
While most Linux distributions have long since moved on from SysVinit in favor of systemd for init duties, this weekend SysVinit 3.09 was released for any legacy users and holdouts still enjoying the System V-init style experience… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9-rc1 Released With AMD P-State Preferred Core, Larger FB Console Fonts
Linus Torvalds just released the first release candidate for Linux 6.9 that now marks the formal end of the two-week merge window… ⌘ Read more

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KVM Virtualization With Linux 6.9 Brings More Optimizations For Intel & AMD
The Kernel-based Virtual Machine changes for Linux 6.9 continue to enhance the capabilities of the open-source Linux virtualization software stack… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Improves Speakup - Its In-Kernel Speech Synthesizer
The speakup driver that’s long existed within the Linux kernel is a speech synthesizer that can interface with various synthesizer hardware and from user-space software can interface with /dev/synth for submitting data to the synthesizer. With Linux 6.9 the speakup driver is seeing two useful improvements… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Delivers More Improvements To The SLUB Allocator
Linux 6.8 dropped the SLAB allocator after its deprecation in v6.5 and now just leaving SLUB for all allocation duties. For Linux 6.9 there is continued cleaning from that SLAB removal as well as making more SLUB improvements… ⌘ Read more

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Rust-Written Coreutils 0.0.25 With Improved GNU Compatibility
Out this weekend is a new version of uutils’ Coreutils 0.0.25 as the Rust-written drop-in replacement to GNU Coreutils for common utilities found on Linux platforms and other systems… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Sees Further Security Hardening
With security concerns at all-time highs in the industry, Linux 6.9 is seeing yet more work to beef up its security hardening with various additional safety checks and other compile-time defenses for ensuring security best practices… ⌘ Read more

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IO_uring With Linux 6.9 Gains Truncate Support, Per-Ring NAPI
The IO_uring changes were merged early during the nearly-over Linux 6.9 merge window. This round brought yet a few more features to this wonderful and innovative kernel feature… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Sees Invasive & Significant Changes To Workqueues
Workqueues are commonly used within the Linux kernel for asynchronous process execution contexts. With Linux 6.9 the workqueue (WQ) code has seen “significant and invasive” changes… ⌘ Read more

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Linux 6.9 Expands Hardware Monitoring Support For More AIO CPU Coolers
The hardware monitoring “HWMON” subsystem updates were merged at the start of the Linux 6.9 merge window and include the recent trend of more all-in-one liquid/water cooling systems seeing Linux driver support to enable convenient monitoring and controls… ⌘ Read more

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Rust Bindings Posted For KMS Drivers, VKMS Ported To Rust
So far when it comes to Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) / Kernel Mode-Setting (KMS) display drivers for Linux, there are Rust efforts underway for the Apple Silicon kernel graphics driver with the Asahi Linux project as well as the new Nova effort for a modern open-source NVIDIA kernel driver from Red Hat. Also now out from Red Hat is posting the Rust bindings for KMS to review plus porting the existing Virtual KMS driver over to Rust as the “RVKMS” driver… ⌘ Read more

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KDE Sees A Number Of Regression Fixes & Some Crash Fixes This Week
KDE developers continue to be quite busy fixing a variety of regressions – including some crashes – with the new KDE Plasma 6 desktop stack. Plasma 6.0.3 will ship next week with yet more fixes while some feature work toward Plasma 6.1 is also underway… ⌘ Read more

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Wine 9.5 Released With More Feature Work, 27 Bug Fixes
Wine 9.5 is out as the newest bi-weekly development release for this open-source software to enjoy Windows games and applications under Linux… ⌘ Read more

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Microsoft Enables DNS Tunneling By Default For WSL - More Reliable Networking
Microsoft is rolling out WSL 2.2.1 to WIndows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) users with more reliable networking support, hang fixes, and other improvements… ⌘ Read more

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GCC Compiler Adds Support For Device Offloading With AMD RDNA3 APUs (GFX1103)
While there is AOMP for OpenMP device offloading based on the LLVM/Clang compiler, less talked about and not as feature-rich is the AMDGCN back-end within the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) that is also worked on for OpenMP device offloading capabilities to Radeon GPUs. Squeezing in for the upcoming GCC 14.1 stable release is GFX1103 support for AMD APUs with RDNA3 integrated graphics… ⌘ Read more

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