Intel Appears On The Verge Of Some Exciting Performance Optimizations For Linux Distros

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Appears On The Verge Of Some Exciting Performance Optimizations For Linux Distros

One thing that has never gotten old over the past nearly twenty years of covering Linux news on Phoronix are the relentless performance optimizations made to the Linux kernel, GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers, and other key open-source projects over the years. Intel engineers have been responsible for so many exciting Linux performance optimizations over time at ensuring maximum Linux x86_64 performance as well as ensuring great performance at a macro-level as they've showcased with the likes of Clear Linux. It looks like they have some new innovation(s) in store soon for further maximizing compiler-assisted performance...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Clear-BOLT-Like-Optimize

[sophisticles]

Michael


Now you did it!

Haven't you realized by now that any article or post that does not praise AMD and/or praises Intel and/or Nvidia is met with suspicion and.or derision?

You need to rewrite this statement:

Intel engineers have been responsible for so many exciting Linux performance optimizations over time at ensuring maximum Linux x86_64 performance as well as ensuring great performance at a macro-level

So that it reads:

While Intel has been ripping off the general public and releasing garbage processors, AMD engineers, being the saints that they are. have been responsible for so many exciting Linux performance optimizations over time at ensuring maximum Linux x86_64 performance as well as ensuring great performance at a macro-level.

Then finish with something along the lines of how you are looking forward to this initiative of Intel's failing miserably because they don't know what they are doing.

See, you have to keep the AMD faithful happy, you don't want then having a fit as they read this article.

[uid313]

The most exciting thing Intel could possible do would be a RISC-V CPU with integrated Intel Xe graphics.

[zexelon]

Wooohhhhhooooo!!!! Now if only they had the CPUs for those optimizations to go with

I saw a GamersNexus "best CPU" category where the new AMD Threadripper Pro took most efficient cpu... for all core workloads. That definitely made me laugh... and wish for an upgrade to the TR Pro... but I cant justify selling both my kidneys for it...

[edwaleni]

Michael


Now you did it!

Haven't you realized by now that any article or post that does not praise AMD and/or praises Intel and/or Nvidia is met with suspicion and.or derision?

You need to rewrite this statement:



So that it reads:



Then finish with something along the lines of how you are looking forward to this initiative of Intel's failing miserably because they don't know what they are doing.

See, you have to keep the AMD faithful happy, you don't want then having a fit as they read this article.

When sarcasm and cynicism is poured on thicker than usual.

[SteamPunker]

I've actually been using Clear Linux OS as my daily driver at home for quite some time now, and it's been surprisingly workable. It's a rolling release distro, with up-to-date kernel and GNOME versions, and it's quite stable and solid. One downside is that some application developers insist on distributing their software as Snaps and not Flatpaks, and although Clear Linux OS supports Flatpaks and AppImages out of the box, it does not support Snap applications. So far, however, I've been able to run all the applications I really need on it one way or the other.

It continues to amaze me how year after year, Clear Linux OS handily beats every other Linux distro in performance tests published on Phoronix. None of them come even close, and even though Clear Linux OS, including all the CPU-specific performance optimizations, is completely open source, the major distros just aren't adopting many of those optimizations, leaving a lot of x86 performance on the table.

Also, I find it surprising how few people actually use it as their desktop distro, despite this consistent performance advantage on the same x86 hardware.

So with these future optimizations that that the article teases about, I wonder how much bigger the difference between Clear and the other distros might become.

[ms178]

Let's wait and see if the results back up the hype as we don't need another APO-like let down right now from Intel. Better software tuning is very much welcome, I compile a lot of packages myself and while it is quite a lot of time consuming work to squeeze everything out of my ageing hardware, but there are rewards to be gained, e.g. Cyberpunk saw an improvement from 71 fps to 86 fps (1440p/Ultra/6950XT/Xeon 2696 V3) just by tuning a couple of game dlls (OpenSSL, zlib-ng, pcre2, libexpat - next to a custom Proton-CachyOs, vkd3d-proton and a PGOed Mesa) for my hardware.

I wonder what they cooked up, a new technique that doesn't need extra profiling and is widely applicable (even with the Linux Kernel) while reaching BOLT-levels of improvements would be great. It would already be an improvement if we could get a repository with good PGO-profiles to download. There already was some work on BOLT that improved performance for stale PGO-profiles considerably, so that idea is not too far fetched.

[domih]

When sarcasm and cynicism is poured on thicker than usual.

I concur. Puerile post attempting to create a tempest in a tea cup when there is none.

This poster needs to look in the mirror and stop projecting. Amen.

[ms178]

I've actually been using Clear Linux OS as my daily driver at home for quite some time now, and it's been surprisingly workable. It's a rolling release distro, with up-to-date kernel and GNOME versions, and it's quite stable and solid. One downside is that some application developers insist on distributing their software as Snaps and not Flatpaks [...].

It's quite ironic that you mentioned using a performance-centric distro and Flatpacks/Snaps in one post together. I had terrible experiences with software that was distributed as Flatpack, Snap and/or Appimage, performance and latency was way too high, startup took way too long or the package was less functional than the native versions. No, thank you. But some software only gets distributed that way these days, that's not something I will support as long as it is a worse experience than native.

If you are looking for a performance-sensitive distro for desktop use, I can recommend to take a look at CachyOS. The distro comes with a lot of tuning out of the box and you can still compile a lot of packages from the AUR yourself if you want. The tight integration into the system's package manager makes this highly tempting albeit risky and a maintenance burden over time. However, while you can get Gnome on CachyOS, too, KDE Plasma is the best supported DE and might be a dealbreaker for some.

P.S: The combination of ease of use and selective compilation from source is very powerful over going the Gentoo route IMHO.

[skeevy420]

It's quite ironic that you mentioned using a performance-centric distro and Flatpacks/Snaps in one post together.

Like 10,000 Waylands when all you need is an X