Hardware News Archives


2,096 Hardware open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Effort Continues To Remove Most Of The SPARC 32-bit CPU Support From Linux
Effort Continues To Remove Most Of The SPARC 32-bit CPU Support From Linux

Last year saw a lot of code clean-up work on the Linux kernel and working to remove support for obsolete hardware no longer being actively maintained within the mainline kernel tree for years. On the CPU side one of the efforts has been to remove unused SPARC 32-bit CPU support for old Sun workstations. The patches for removing unused SPARC32 code was updated this weekend and now undergoing review.

10 March 2024 - Dropping Sun4m & Sun4d - 15 Comments
A Linux Kernel API For Today's Complex RGB Devices Is Being Devised
A Linux Kernel API For Today's Complex RGB Devices Is Being Devised

When it comes to today's complex RGB lighting for PC peripherals and the like it's mostly been left up to user-space. With most RGB devices interfacing via USB, it's been up to Linux user-space projects like OpenRGB, OpenRazer, etc, to implement their RGB lighting controls as needed. But as RGB lighting use continues to grow in the PC space for better or worse, there's an increasing need for a kernel API to handle complex RGB devices. Such an API is currently being devised.

21 February 2024 - Modern RGB Lighting - 20 Comments
Linux Still Working To Disable RNDIS Drivers In 2024
Linux Still Working To Disable RNDIS Drivers In 2024

Back in January 2023 was an attempt to disable kernel drivers for Microsoft's RNDIS protocol. The Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS) is home to security concerns for this protocol built atop USB for virtual Ethernet functionality. Later in the year the effort to disable RNDIS on Linux was tried again without going mainline. In recent days it looks like there will be a fresh attempt at getting the RNDIS driver support disabled.

19 February 2024 - Microsoft RNDIS - 63 Comments
Linux Developers To Meet Again To Work On HDR, Color Management & VRR
Linux Developers To Meet Again To Work On HDR, Color Management & VRR

Last April was a display/HDR hackfest hosted in the Czech Republic by Red Hat. Another Linux display hackfest has been announced for this year so upstream stakeholders can collaborate around high dynamic range (HDR) monitor support, color management, variable refresh rate (VRR), and other topics.

18 February 2024 - Display Hackfest - 54 Comments
Cleaning Up A Mess: Linux 6.9 Likely To Land Rework Of x86 CPU Topology Code
Cleaning Up A Mess: Linux 6.9 Likely To Land Rework Of x86 CPU Topology Code

Longtime Linux kernel developer Thomas Gleixner with Intel-owned Linutronix has been spending much time over the past several months reworking the Linux kernel's x86 CPU topology evaluation code. This is to clean-up a mess of aging kernel code as well as some areas of the code being incorrect in today's era of hybrid Intel Core processors with a mix of P / E cores with the E cores lacking SMT/HT and thus throwing off prior kernel assumptions. With the code now queued up in a TIP branch today, it looks like that CPU topology rework could be good to go with Linux 6.9.

16 February 2024 - Cleaning Up A Mess - 43 Comments
Qualcomm Hardware Support Increasingly In Good Shape On The Mainline Linux Kernel
Qualcomm Hardware Support Increasingly In Good Shape On The Mainline Linux Kernel

After years of work by Qualcomm and Linaro engineers, the Qualcomm SoC support on the mainline Linux kernel has finally matured enough that new hardware support tends to come rather quickly and be well supported. With the forthcoming Linux 6.8 kernel the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can boot on the mainline kernel, the Snapdragon-powered ThinkPad X13s has been popular with Linux developers thanks to the upstream support, and other Qualcomm-powered devices tending to play more nicely with upstream Linux these days rather than having to resort to vendor kernel builds.

10 February 2024 - Qualcomm SoCs On Mainline - 13 Comments
A New Attempt At Async Device Shutdown Support For Linux
A New Attempt At Async Device Shutdown Support For Linux

Asynchronous device shutdown support for the Linux kernel has been pursued in the past as with hyperscalers like Google having too many NVMe storage devices can slow the shutdown/reboot process. Red Hat on Wednesday submitted a new patch series aiming to implement async device shutdown support.

8 February 2024 - Async Device Shutdown - 2 Comments
Linux 6.9 To Support The Power Profile Key On New Lenovo ThinkPads
Linux 6.9 To Support The Power Profile Key On New Lenovo ThinkPads

On newer Lenovo ThinkPad laptops (2024+ models) there is a new key combination appearing to make it easy to switch between ACPI Platform Profiles for toggling your power/performance preference of the system. With the Linux 6.9 kernel coming in a few months this key will now work under Linux too.

3 February 2024 - Fn + F8 - 13 Comments
New Linux Driver Posted For Latest NZXT AIO CPU Coolers
New Linux Driver Posted For Latest NZXT AIO CPU Coolers

Thanks to the reverse-engineering, open-source community there is already a NZXT Kraken Linux driver for supporting hardware monitoring and controls for various NZXT all-in-one CPU liquid cooler products. A new Linux driver was posted today for supporting the latest generation of the NZXT AIO CPU coolers.

29 January 2024 - nzxt-kraken3 - 5 Comments
TuxClocker 1.5 Released With Radeon RX 7000 Series Fan Control Support
TuxClocker 1.5 Released With Radeon RX 7000 Series Fan Control Support

TuxClocker as the open-source, hardware/driver vendor independent overclocking and power management control utility for Linux systems is out with a new feature release. This Qt-based utility for enthusiasts continues adding new controls primarily around greater power/performance tunables for CPUs and GPUs.

28 January 2024 - TuxClocker 1.5 - 10 Comments
Linux 6.8 To Support ACPI-Based Enumeration Of CSI-2 / MIPI Cameras
Linux 6.8 To Support ACPI-Based Enumeration Of CSI-2 / MIPI Cameras

Along with the Linux 6.8 power management updates, maintainer Rafael Wysocki at Intel also sent in the ACPI updates for this next kernel version. While the ACPI changes for the kernel are often just routine churn, this cycle it's bringing a new feature: device enumeration for CSI-2 and MIPI DisCo for Imaging support. This will allow MIPI cameras moving forward to be enumerated via the platform firmware on ACPI-based systems.

10 January 2024 - ACPI - 1 Comment
A Nifty Way To Access Linux Memory/RAM Information
A Nifty Way To Access Linux Memory/RAM Information

Making use of dmidecode is the go-to way of being able to read various DIMM memory information on Linux systems like the model number, speed, and other attributes. But sadly using dmidecode is restricted to root due to needing to access /dev/mem. But it turns out there is another less reported way to receive much the same information.

9 January 2024 - DIMM Details - 21 Comments
More CXL Feature Code Prepped Ahead Of Linux 6.8
More CXL Feature Code Prepped Ahead Of Linux 6.8

Intel Linux engineers continue eagerly working on the Compute Express Link (CXL) code for the Linux kernel with more server hardware coming to market supporting this high-speed open standard for CPU-to-device and CPU-to-memory connections.

26 December 2023 - Compute Express Link - 1 Comment
ASRock Launches AI QuickSet Software For Linux
ASRock Launches AI QuickSet Software For Linux

Here's a pleasant Christmas present and one I certainly wasn't expecting... Motherboard manufacturer ASRock has announced software for Linux! Well, not any motherboard management/configuration software for their desktop motherboards or anything like that but rather a Linux port of their AI QuickSet software that is intended to help users "experience AI in one click."

22 December 2023 - AI QuickSet For Linux - 30 Comments
Sophgo SG2380 RISC-V SoC To Now Support Up To 96GB RAM, Additional PCIe & 25 GbE
Sophgo SG2380 RISC-V SoC To Now Support Up To 96GB RAM, Additional PCIe & 25 GbE

Back in October the Milk-V Oasis mITX board was announced with this RISC-V board being powered by a 16-core Sophgo SG2380 SoC featuring SiFive-designed cores: 12 P cores and four E cores. While that Milk-V Oasis board isn't expected to ship until Q3'2024, Milk-V shared this week that the SG2380 RISC-V SoC has been revised with additional capabilities.

17 December 2023 - SG2380 Upgrade - 5 Comments
PoCL 5.0-RC1 Released With Experimental OpenCL For Networked Systems
PoCL 5.0-RC1 Released With Experimental OpenCL For Networked Systems

PoCL 5.0-RC1 is out today as the newest feature release being brewed for this "Portable Computing Language" implementation that allows for OpenCL code to run on CPUs as well as running OpenCL code on other back-ends such as atop NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm and other LLVM back-ends.

8 December 2023 - PoCL 5.0 - 9 Comments
TuxClocker 1.4 Brings More CPU & GPU Features
TuxClocker 1.4 Brings More CPU & GPU Features

TuxClocker continues on its quest as being one of the leading open-source GUI control panels for overclockers and enthusiasts on Linux. Out this morning is TuxClocker 1.4 that brings more features for making this Qt-based open-source app more useful for those overclocking or just wanting to keep a better eye on their hardware's performance and thermals/power from the Linux desktop.

4 December 2023 - TuxClocker 1.4 - 3 Comments
ASRock X570D4U BMC Working Toward OpenBMC Support
ASRock X570D4U BMC Working Toward OpenBMC Support

For those that happen to own an ASRock Rack X570D4U micro-ATX motherboard or are in the market for a server-grade AMD Ryzen 5000 series motherboard, patches are pending as this motherboard works on OpenBMC support as an alternative to the proprietary BMC software stack that ships with this AMD Ryzen 5000 series + ECC DDR4 supported motherboard.

3 December 2023 - ASRock X570D4U + OpenBMC - 9 Comments

2096 Hardware news articles published on Phoronix.