Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

8 November

Google Axion CPU With GCE C4A vs. AWS Graviton4 Performance
Google Axion CPU With GCE C4A vs. AWS Graviton4 Performance
8 November 09:00 AM EST - Processors - 4 Comments

Last week Google announced the general availability of their C4A instances powered by their in-house Axion processors. I delivered launch-day benchmarks looking at the Google Axion CPU performance with the C4A instances compared to other Google Cloud instance types powered by Ampere Altra and Intel Xeon. In this article is a look at how the Google Axion processor performance compares to the competing Amazon/AWS Graviton4 processor.

7 November

NVIDIA GH200 Grace CPU vs. AMD EPYC 9005 Turin CPU Performance
NVIDIA GH200 Grace CPU vs. AMD EPYC 9005 Turin CPU Performance
7 November 12:37 PM EST - Processors - 20 Comments

With the AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" testing over the past month since launch I have looked at how well the new EPYC Turin CPUs compete against Intel Xeon, how Turin Dense dominates in performance and power efficiency to AmpereOne at 192 cores, and the generational uplift from EPYC Genoa to Turin at the same core counts, among other Turin performance benchmark tests. Up for comparison today is a look at how the NVIDIA Grace CPU performance within the GH200 Superchip compares to the AMD EPYC Turin processors.

Linux 6.13 To Allow Controlling Zero RPM Feature For Radeon RX 7000 Series GPUs
Linux 6.13 To Allow Controlling Zero RPM Feature For Radeon RX 7000 Series GPUs
7 November 10:19 AM EST - Radeon - Zero RPM Fan Control - 26 Comments

Sent out yesterday was an AMDGPU/AMDKFD kernel driver pull request with the last few feature additions and patches slated for the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel merge window. Alongside other AMD kernel graphics driver updates, the new driver code with Radeon RX 7000 series RDNA3 graphics cards will finally allow controlling the zero RPM fan feature under Linux.

Mesa RADV Driver Delivers Conformant Vulkan 1.3 Support For Old AMD GFX6/GFX7 GPUs
Mesa RADV Driver Delivers Conformant Vulkan 1.3 Support For Old AMD GFX6/GFX7 GPUs
7 November 06:56 AM EST - Radeon - Vulkan 1.3 Conformance - 19 Comments

While old Radeon GFX6/GFX7 era graphics processors are no longer actively supported by AMD on Windows and haven't been for quite a while, under Linux with the upstream open-source driver stack they remain supported and still enjoying improvements in large part from common code. The most recent fascinating aspect is the old AMD GFX6/GFX7 era GPUs seeing official Vulkan 1.3 support that has been deemed conformant by Khronos.

6 November

GIMP 3.2 Will Aim To Be Out Within One Year Of GIMP 3.0
6 November 04:22 PM EST - Free Software - GIMP 3.2 One Year After GIMP 3.0 - 21 Comments

Following the GIMP 3.0-RC1 tagging, the GIMP project has now put out their lengthy write-up outlining many of the new features to enjoy with this first release candidate of the much anticipated GIMP 3.0. Plus there is a few words about future releases when moving past the upcoming GIMP 3.0 stable.

Fresh Take On Linux Uncached Buffered I/O "RWF_UNCACHED" Nets 65~75% Improvement
6 November 03:02 PM EST - Linux Storage - RWF_UNCACHED - 12 Comments

Linux I/O expert and block/IO_uring maintainer Jens Axboe of Meta has recently revisited his patches around uncached buffered I/O. Back in 2019 the "RWF_UNCACHED" effort was started by Axboe to address a throughput cliff in performance once the page cache fills up. That work faded away but Axboe recently took to crafting a set of fresh patches for implementing uncached buffered I/O and they are showing extremely promising results.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Linux Performance: Zen 5 With 3D V-Cache
6 November 09:00 AM EST - Processors - 56 Comments

Ahead of tomorrow's availability of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor as the first Zen 5 CPU released with 3D V-Cache, today the review embargo lifts. Here is a look at how this 8-core / 16-thread Zen 5 CPU with 64MB of 3D V-Cache is performing under Ubuntu Linux compared to a variety of other Intel Core and AMD Ryzen desktop processors.

cURL 8.11 Released With Official WebSockets Support
6 November 06:09 AM EST - Free Software - cURL 8.11 - 4 Comments

The cURL 8.11 release is now available for this widely-used open-source software library and CLI utility used for downloads and supporting a variety of network protocols for file transfers. Most notable with cURL 8.11 is sporting official WebSockets support.

5 November

Linux 6.13 To Enhance Logic For Trusting Built-In Thunderbolt Controllers
5 November 06:14 AM EST - Hardware - Thunderbolt - 12 Comments

Due to the possibility of DMA attacks from connected Thunderbolt devices, Linux and other platforms have built up safeguards over the years and different security levels for Thunderbolt to better protect systems having this high speed interface exposing PCIe. With the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel, the logic of the kernel is being enhanced to better detect and trust built-in Thunderbolt controllers.

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