Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

1 December

Lutris 0.5.18 Linux Game Manager Brings Many Improvements
Lutris 0.5.18 Linux Game Manager Brings Many Improvements
10 Hours Ago - Linux Gaming - Lutris 0.5.18 - 3 Comments

Lutris 0.5.18 is out today as the newest version of this open-source game manager for Linux systems to help with installing and playing a variety of games whether they be native Linux titles, emulated Windows games with the likes of Wine / Proton, or console emulated games and more. Lutris also continues integrating with the likes of Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, and other online game services for providing a nice Linux gaming experience.

Apple M4, More AMD Zen 5 Benchmarks & Linux Kernel Drama From November
Apple M4, More AMD Zen 5 Benchmarks & Linux Kernel Drama From November
1 December 06:45 AM EST - Phoronix - November 2024 Highlights - 1 Comment

November was filled with interesting Linux benchmarks ranging from the Apple M4 testing kicking off to ongoing AMD Zen 5 benchmarks both for desktops and servers, a lot of exciting upstream kernel activity (and some drama...), and more. Even with the end of year holidays around, there remains new and original content on Phoronix each and every day. During November there were 250 original news articles on Phoronix along with another 14 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured-length benchmark articles.

NVIDIA's New Linux Patches For GPU Direct RDMA For Device-Private Pages
NVIDIA's New Linux Patches For GPU Direct RDMA For Device-Private Pages
1 December 06:26 AM EST - Linux Kernel - P2P DMA For GPU-Centric Apps - 2 Comments

NVIDIA engineer Yonatan Maman posted a set of "request for comments" patches this Sunday to implement GPU Direct RDMA "P2P DMA" for device private pages. This is the latest in the effort by multiple vendors to allow more efficient data sharing between GPUs/accelerators and other devices like network adapters.

30 November

Clang AutoFDO + Propeller Optimization Support Merged For Linux 6.13
Clang AutoFDO + Propeller Optimization Support Merged For Linux 6.13
30 November 09:00 PM EST - Linux Kernel - AutoFDO + Propeller - 3 Comments

Last night when writing about the Clang AutoFDO and Propeller optimization patches sent in for Linux 6.13 I had wondered whether Linus Torvalds would go through with the pull request given some of his past commentary around aggressive compiler optimizations... But to much delight, this evening Linus Torvalds has merged the Kbuild pull request that introduces Clang-based AutoFDO and Propeller compiler optimization support for allowing greater kernel performance out of tailored (profiled) workloads.

Resources System Monitoring App For GNOME Now Displays NPU Usage
Resources System Monitoring App For GNOME Now Displays NPU Usage
30 November 07:00 AM EST - GNOME - Resources v1.7 - 28 Comments

As an alternative to the GNOME System Monitor application for system monitoring, Resources has been in development as a currently unofficial, GNOME-aligned resource/hardware monitoring application written in the Rust programming language. Resources v1.7 was released on Friday and now has the ability to monitor NPU usage and other enhancements.

Linux 6.13 Hits A "Tipping Point" With More Rust Drivers Expected Soon
Linux 6.13 Hits A "Tipping Point" With More Rust Drivers Expected Soon
30 November 06:00 AM EST - Linux Kernel - Linux 6.13 char/misc - 39 Comments

In addition to the USB updates and big staging flush merged yesterday for the Linux 6.13 kernel merge window, the "char/misc" pull was also honored for that catch-all of various kernel changes. With the char/misc pull there are some notable additions for those wanting to write kernel drivers within the Rust programming language.

29 November

AMD BIOS Tuning Guide Impact For Boosting AI/ML Performance On EPYC 9005 Series
AMD BIOS Tuning Guide Impact For Boosting AI/ML Performance On EPYC 9005 Series
29 November 10:36 AM EST - Software - 6 Comments

Following the release last month of the EPYC 9005 series processors, AMD published a BIOS and Workload Tuning Guide of straight-forward settings recommendations for those running new EPYC Turin servers to optimize the performance of different workloads like databases and Java to HPC and AI/ML software. Recently I started running some benchmarks to look at the impact of AMD's recommended BIOS tuning and beginning this comparison by looking at the performance (and power) impact across a range of AI / machine learning workloads on a 5th Gen AMD EPYC server.

Linux 6.13 Staging Clears Out 107k Lines Of Code From Old & Unmaintained Drivers
Linux 6.13 Staging Clears Out 107k Lines Of Code From Old & Unmaintained Drivers
29 November 06:43 AM EST - Linux Kernel - Linux 6.13 Staging - 40 Comments

Greg Kroah-Hartman is out today with all of the pull requests for Linux 6.13 of the areas of the kernel he oversees. Most notable with the updates on the staging side are clearing out several drivers seeing no real code activity and no apparent users of the mainline Linux kernel... As such the staging pull lightens the kernel by around 107k lines of code.

28 November

Intel Graphics Compiler Removes Support For Ice Lake & Older
28 November 07:18 AM EST - Intel - Ice Lake Gen11 & Older - 4 Comments

The Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) that is used by the Intel Compute Runtime for Level Zero and OpenCL GPU compute support as well as being depended upon by the Windows 3D driver stack has now removed platform support up to and including Ice Lake.

27 November

AMD Begins Work Upstreaming More Versal 2 SoC Support For Linux
27 November 02:40 PM EST - AMD - Versal 2 - 1 Comment

Back in April AMD announced the Versal Gen 2 Adaptive SoCs for AI-driven embedded systems. In preparing for Versal2 evaluation kits expected around the middle of the year and production silicon by the end of 2025, AMD software engineers have begun ramping up their open-source and upstream-focused Linux driver support.

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