Programming News Archives

Java 21 and the JDK 21 release under a general availability (GA) status occurred a short time ago as the newest major update to the Java programming language.

Version 3.3.3 of the Lightweight Java Game Library (LWJGL) is now available for this Java library that makes it easy to utilize native APIs from OpenGL and Vulkan to OpenCL compute and other OS APIs within Java's confines. LWJGL is used for Java games and can also be used with other Java software looking for rich API support particularly around GPU integration.

PoCL began as an open-source project providing a CPU-based OpenCL implementation and over the years has added support for various LLVM back-ends such as for targeting AMD HSA, Intel Level Zero, and NVIDIA CUDA/PTX with its OpenCL implementation. The latest back-end merged ahead of Portable Computing Language 5.0 is a remote back-end that allows for OpenCL codes to be transparently utilized on networked systems for distributed computing.

OpenBLAS 0.3.24 is now available for this latest open-source BLAS and LAPACK implementation known for its advanced CPU optimizations and extensive tuning for providing for very speedy linear algebra kernels.

The first release candidate of PHP 8.3 is now available for testing this annual feature release.

SQLite 3.43 is out today as the newest version of this popular open-source embedded SQL database library that is widely used by countless applications and other software for a variety of data storage purposes.

Git 2.42 is out today as the newest feature update for this dominant open-source distributed revision control system.

Released last week was Eclipse OpenJ9 v0.40 as the latest feature update to this high performance JVM that focuses on being optimized for a small footprint.

Last month the Mold 2.0 high-speed linker was released that shifted from AGPL to MIT licensing after their monetization strategy didn't pan out. This weekend the project is out with its Mold 2.1 release as another step forward for this alternative linker to GNU Gold and LLVM LLD.

Go 1.21 is now available as the latest version of this popular programming language.

Available now for testing is the release candidate of Python 3.12 ahead of its formal release later this year.

LPython is the latest open-source Python implementation aiming to be a very performant version of Python among other interesting features.

Mold 2.0 is out today as a major update to this high performance linker developed by Rui Ueyama. Mold has consistently shown to outperform GNU's Gold and LLVM's LLD linkers while today is making another shift with it now turning to MIT licensing.

Prior to LLVM/Clang becoming so popular within organizations and it maturing well on x86_64, AArch64, and other architectures, Open64 was once quite popular in areas now dominated by LLVM and GCC. Open64 had been popular with academic researchers, AMD even maintained their Open64 optimized compiler a decade prior to the LLVM-based AOCC, and was quite popular in the HPC space. Surprisingly there's been some recent activity on the Open64 compiler code.

The uutils project continues advancing as a modern, drop-in replacement to the GNU Coreutils utilities that is written in the Rust programming language.

After being in development for more than one year, Perl 5.38 released today as the latest feature update to this programming language.

OpenCV 4.8 was released yesterday as the newest feature update to this leading open-source computer vision (CV) library.

Back in April was the release of Slint 1.0 for this open-source, Rust-focused graphical toolkit formerly known as SixtyFPS. Today marks the release of Slint 1.1 as the first significant feature update after crossing the 1.0 milestone.

Wasmer is an open-source WebAssembly implementation that is focused on running sandboxed applications everywhere thanks to the power of WASM while being as performant as traditional native applications. Today marks the availability of Wasmer 4.0 as another step forward for this project.

The Go 1.21 release candidate is out today and it's interesting on the performance front plus a few language additions like min / max / clear functions as well as further enhancing its standard library.

While the Linux 6.5 merge window isn't opening for another week, Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda has already submitted the pull request of the new Rust kernel code destined for this next kernel cycle.

Python 3.12 isn't even being released until October and Python 3.13 won't be out until H2'2024, but already the developers working on tuning CPython performance are aiming to make more enhancements this next development cycle.

Following Oracle releasing an updated GraalVM this week, released yesterday was a new version of Eclipse OpenJ9 for this high performance, open-source JVM.

Today marks the ramp-down phase one point for JDK 21 where the OpenJDK code is forked from mainline for this de facto Java 21 implementation. Making OpenJDK 21 all the more exciting is this is going to be one of Oracle's bi-annual Long-Term Support (LTS) releases.

The open-source uutils project that is striving to be a drop-in replacement to GNU Coreutils but written within the Rust programming language is out today with a new feature update.

The Portable Computing Language "PoCL" began as an open-source CPU-based OpenCL implementation that has become quite a comprehensive implementation over the years. But in leveraging the LLVM/Clang compiler stack, over time PoCL has grown beyond just a CPU implementation to also support OpenCL execution on NVIDIA GPUs, AMD HSA-capable GPUs, and more. The latest now coming with PoCL 4.0 is support for Intel Level Zero execution for running this OpenCL implementation over Intel Arc Graphics GPUs.

PostgreSQL 16 is up to its first beta milestone today with new performance optimizations and continued security enhancements.

The first beta release of Python 3.12 is now available that also marks the beginning of the feature freeze for this year's major Python update.

SQLite 3.42 is now available as the newest update to this widely-used, embed-friendly SQL database option that is used by countless applications and other software for lightweight and speedy data storage purposes.

The PXP project has been an interesting language effort in recent times that aims to become a superset of PHP with additional syntax options and greater run-time capabilities. PXP 0.0.1 was released yesterday as the first very early, pre-production release for this open-source project.

A new release of TornadoVM is now available, the open-source plug-in to OpenJDK and GraalVM to allow for Java code to run on heterogeneous hardware with ease -- including various GPU models as well as FPGAs.

With the financial backing of Amazon Web Services, sudo and su are being rewritten in the Rust programming language in order to increase the memory safety for the widely relied upon software.

Rust 1.69 is out today as stable as the newest update to this increasingly popular programming language that has become passionate to many open-source developers for its memory safety guarantees and other principles.

The Hero C Compiler "HCC" wants to make it easy to compile C code to run on GPUs by compiling common C11 code and turning it into SPIR-V modules that can then be consumed by GPUs with Vulkan support.

Wasmer as the open-source project focused on providing a "universal WebAssembly runtime" that supports a variety of platforms and architectures is out today with a new feature release.

Libuv as the cross-platform asynchronous I/O library that is used by the likes of Node.js, Julia, and other software packages now has support for making use of IO_uring on Linux.

A new release of Eclipse OpenJ9 is now available, the high performance JVM implementation previously developed as IBM J9.

One of several notable open-source projects to rewrite key Linux software components with the memory-safety-focused Rust programming language is uutils as an alternative to GNU Coreutils. Released this weekend was uutils v0.0.18 that continues to enhance compatibility with the upstream GNU Coreutils programs.

Apache IoTDB 1.1 has been released today as this database for the "Internet of Things" as a high performance time-series database solution. Like with most time-series databases, ApAche IoTDB aims to provide a high performance solution for data management and analysis from the edge to the cloud with high throughput, efficient data storage, and robust open-source software integration.

A new release of OpenBLAS is now available, the open-source BLAS and LAPACK implementation known for its wide variety of processor optimizations.

Promoted to general availability (GA) status today is the OpenJDK Java 20 update with a number of new features.

While there is Pyston, PyPy, and various other alternative Python implementations being done in the name of performance, Codon is one of the newer ones and is talking up 10~100x faster performance.

Mold 1.11 is out as the newest version of this open-source high performance linker that rivals the likes of LLVM LLD and GNU Gold for very speedy linking across multiple CPU architectures.

Following the PyTorch Foundation talking up PyTorch 2.0 since the end of last year, today marks the PyTorch 2.0 release officially shipping. PyTorch 2.0 has significant optimizations to "supercharge" it with better performance for both CPU and GPU modes of operation.

Back in 2021 Ruby merged the YJIT just-in-time compiler that last year with Ruby 3.2 was deemed production grade. There's also been the MJIT compiler that relies upon an external C compiler. And now landing this week in Ruby is RJIT as the newest just-in-time effort.

Python 3.12 Alpha 6 was released on Tuesday as the newest development release toward this next major Python release.

Coming about over the past two years has been uutils as a re-implementation of GNU Coreutils written within the Rust programming language. This Rust-based version of cp, mv, and other core utilities is reaching closer to parity with the widely-used GNU upstream and becoming capable of taking on more real-world uses.

Google has released a new version of the Go programming language that with today's v1.20 release come a number of notable additions as well as gutting out support for older versions of Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS. Two features alone have me excited about Go 1.20: initial work on CPU architecture feature build flags like for x86_64 micro-architecture feature level handling and initial support for Profile Guided Optimizations (PGO) builds.

TornadoVM is an open-source plugin for OpenJDK and GraalVM that allows for running Java programs on heterogeneous hardware like GPUs and FPGAs. With today's TornadoVM 0.15, it's the first release now supporting discrete Intel Arc Graphics hardware.

Mold 1.10 was released today by lead developer Rui Ueyama as the newest version of this high speed linker that has been outperforming GNU Gold and LLVM LLD.