Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

Google Axion CPU With GCE C4A vs. AWS Graviton4 Performance
Google Axion CPU With GCE C4A vs. AWS Graviton4 Performance
12 Hours Ago - Processors - 2 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 - 17 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 - 25 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
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 - 20 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
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
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Linux Performance: Zen 5 With 3D V-Cache
6 November 09:00 AM EST - Processors - 53 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
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

Power Determinism Mode Still Proves Beneficial For AMD EPYC 9005 Performance
Power Determinism Mode Still Proves Beneficial For AMD EPYC 9005 Performance
5 November 03:25 PM EST - Processors - 2 Comments

Typically in my launch-day Linux reviews of new AMD EPYC processors I try to include results both of the performance determinism (default) and power determinism modes available with these server processors since opting in to the power determinism mode can allow for additional performance uplift at the cost of slightly higher power costs. With the AMD EPYC 9575F / 9755 / 9965 benchmarks and review I didn't have a chance to complete all of the power determinism runs in time for that review, but for those curious about power vs. performance determinism modes with the 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" processors, here is a side-by-side comparison.

Linux 6.13 To Enhance Logic For Trusting Built-In Thunderbolt Controllers
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.

4 November

Intel Panther Lake Display Support Squeezing Into Linux 6.13
4 November 08:24 PM EST - Intel - Panther Lake Display - Add A Comment

Queued up over the past month into DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.13 kernel cycle has been initial support for Xe3 graphics to be found with Panther Lake processors. The initial Xe3 graphics driver support patches have been trickling in while the final drm-intel-next pull ahead of the Linux 6.13 merge window has readied support for actually being able to light up a display connected to Xe3 LPD graphics with Panther Lake.

Intel Releases x86-simd-sort 6.0 For Speedy AVX2/AVX-512 Sorting, PyTorch Now Using It
4 November 02:02 PM EST - Intel - x86-simd-sort 6.0 - 2 Comments

The x86-simd-sort project from Intel has been an interesting open-source software effort for much faster number sorting by using AVX-512. There's been lightning fast number sorting with AVX-512 and AVX2 code paths also added to broaden the appeal in helping CPUs without AVX-512. Projects like Numpy have been making use of this library while today x86-simd-sort 6.0 was released and also comes a few days after PyTorch has begun using this library too.

TOUPUWAN 30-Slot Laptop/Tablet Storage Cart
4 November 01:57 PM EST - Peripherals - 12 Comments

To clear up the ever-growing stack of laptops, I recently bought a TOUPUWAN 30-Slot Laptop/Tablet Storage Cart. This laptop/tablet storage cart can accommodate 32 devices in total while slots for up to 30 laptops/tablets 16.3-inches in size. It does have built-in power strips as well to easily facilitate charging of the devices while securely stored away but for my purposes I was just looking for something to better organize the mess of laptops I only occasionally pull out when running new Linux laptop benchmarks.

AMD Posts New Linux Mitigation Handling For SRSO/Inception
4 November 06:17 AM EST - AMD - Speculative Return Stack Overflow - Add A Comment

AMD Linux engineer Borislav Petkov kicked off the new week by volleying a patch for adjusting the Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO, a.k.a. "Inception") vulnerability mitigation handling for capabilities to be found with affected processors running on newer CPU microcode.

CachyOS Explores Optimizing Its Kernel With AutoFDO
4 November 05:55 AM EST - Arch Linux - CachyOS + AutoFDO Kernel - 11 Comments

CachyOS continues to be a fascinating Arch Linux based distribution that pushes the boundaries of out-of-the-box performance with a variety of patches, optimization techniques, specialized package builds, and more. One of the latest areas they are exploring is making use of AutoFDO for their kernel builds.

3 November

Nice Performance Gains With SVT-AV1 2.3 Encoding On The System76 Thelio Astra
3 November 06:26 AM EST - Arm - SVT-AV1 v2.3 - 3 Comments

With this week's release of SVT-AV1 2.3 for open-source AV1 encoding citing significant performance improvements for running on ARM, I was eager to see how well this AV1 encoder would be performing on the new System76 Thelio Astra ARM developer desktop powered by Ampere Altra. Here are some benchmarks showing those big speed-ups for ARM-based AV1 encoding.

Snapdragon X1 Elite CPUFreq Support Revised In Latest Linux Patches
3 November 05:58 AM EST - Arm - Snapdragon X1 Elite CPUFreq - 6 Comments

While the mainline Linux kernel has begun seeing initial support for various Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops, various feature limitations are outstanding before these Qualcomm-powered laptops really become usable for daily use. For instance, just a few days ago the audio firmware was finally upstreamed to make setting up X1 Elite laptops easier. Another important feature as an example is CPUFreq driver support for CPU frequency scaling to ensure optimal performance and power efficiency.

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