Linux 6.11, Ryzen AI 300 Series, Open-Source NVIDIA Kernel Driver & Other July News
July was an interesting mix of software and hardware. August should be equally or more exciting with the AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors launching, more interesting laptop news, and also exciting software work from early kernel features baking for Linux 6.12 to the initial alpha release of the COSMIC desktop. As usual if you enjoy all of the original content on Phoronix each and every day, please consider subscribing to Phoronix Premium to enjoy the site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and other benefits all while allowing the site to continue. At the very least please do not enable any ad-blocker on the site. Due to the sad state of the ad industry and other factors, operations unfortunately remain difficult.
With that said the most popular news in July included:
Linus Torvalds Addresses His Latest ARM64 Annoyance: Installing Compressed Kernel Images
Following Linus Torvalds receiving an Ampere Altra Max workstation from Ampere Computing, he's been dabbling more with ARM64 now that it affords him more AArch64 compute power than his Apple Silicon powered MacBook. Torvalds kicked off the Linux 6.11 merge window by landing some of his own code to further enhance the ARM64 kernel and as we approach the end of the v6.11 merge window this weekend, he's merged some more ARM64 code.
Linus Torvalds Unconvinced By getrandom() In The vDSO
While there were plans of adding getrandom() in the vDSO with the upcoming Linux 6.11 merge window to speed up user-space random number generation access, Linus Torvalds is unconvinced by the work and intends to reject any pull request with it for Linux 6.11.
EXT4 Has A Very Nice Performance Optimization For Linux 6.11
With the maturity of the EXT4 file-system it's not too often seeing any huge feature additions for this commonly used Linux file-system but there's still the occasional wild performance optimization to uncover... With Linux 6.11 the EXT4 file-system can see upwards of a 20% performance boost in some scenarios.
COSMIC Desktop Very Close To Alpha Release, Adds Compositor Multi-Threading
System76 continues working vigorously on COSMIC, their Rust-written Linux desktop environment being written for Pop!_OS and to see availability on other Linux distributions as well. They are finishing up last minute changes before putting the flag on a COSMIC alpha release.
Linux's DRM Panic "Screen of Death" Sees Patches For QR Code Error Messages
Linux 6.10 introduces DRM Panic for providing a new panic screen in case of kernel errors and situations where the VT support may be disabled. This new kernel functionality is akin to Windows' Blue Screen of Death or thanks to open-source can be adapted to take on other forms such as a black screen of death and conveying monochrome logos rather than ASCII art. New patches provide for the ability to show QR codes of error messages within the DRM Panic screens.
Firefox 128 Now Available With A Fix For A 25 Year Old Bug Report
Mozilla Firefox 128.0 is now available for download ahead of the official release announcement due out in the coming hours.
Microsoft's WSL2 Transitions To Linux 6.6 LTS Kernel
The kernel powering Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) has long been using the Linux 5.15 LTS kernel while finally it's now upgraded past that aging long-term support kernel and onto the current Linux 6.6 LTS series.
Meta Sees ~5% Performance Gains To Optimizing The Linux Kernel With BOLT
For years Meta/Facebook has been exploring using BOLT with the Linux kernel to optimize the layout of the Linux kernel binary. Since BOLT was upstreamed into LLVM, they've continued work around BOLT'ing the kernel. There is now a public guide for carrying out a BOLT-optimized Linux kernel build and roughly 5% better system performance to expect from such an optimized kernel.
Linus Torvalds Begins The Linux 6.11 Merge Window By Merging Some Of His Own Code
Linus Torvalds began the Linux 6.11 merge window yesterday by merging some of his own feature code for this next kernel version.
RegreSSHion: Remote Code Execution Vulnerability In OpenSSH Server
Qualys went public today with a security vulnerability they have discovered within the OpenSSH server that could lead to remote, unauthenticated code execution.
Zed Editor Now Publishing Native Linux Builds
The Rust-written, GPU-accelerated Zed text editor is finally providing official Linux builds!
Microsoft's WSL 2.3.11 Brings "Hundreds Of New Kernel Modules" & New Features
Microsoft today published a new version of their Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in pre-release form.
Linux Looking To Make 5-Level Paging Support Unconditional For x86_64 Kernel Builds
It's been nearly one decade since Intel began working on 5-level paging support for the Linux kernel to allow for greater virtual and physical address space with expanding memory sizes. The 5-level paging kernel-side bits were upstreamed back in Linux 4.12 in 2017 and enabled by default since 2019 with Linux 5.5. Intel CPUs for a while (since Ice Lake) have supported 5-level paging and AMD CPUs too since Zen 4. The Linux kernel may move to unconditionally enabling 5-level paging support for x86_64 kernel builds.
NVIDIA Promotes Their Open-Source GPU Kernel Driver Support
It's been a wild two years since NVIDIA began publishing an open-source Linux GPU kernel driver for Turing GPUs and newer. With the latest NVIDIA 555 Linux driver series that open-source kernel driver support is in great shape and NVIDIA today is out with a lengthy blog post promoting it.
VirtualBox 7.1 Beta Released With Modernized GUI, Wayland Support For Clipboard Sharing
Oracle today released the first public beta of their VirtualBox 7.1 virtualization software.
Linux Patch To Disable The Snapdragon X Elite "X1E80100" GPU By Default
While many have been excited around the prospects of laptops powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC, the Linux support so far still leaves a lot to be desired... The initial Snapdragon X Elite laptops aren't utilizing ACPI standards and the bring-up under Linux has been slow, but patches have begun appearing for some models. But even with patches, the Adreno GPU remains a big obstacle still being tackled along with other features like web camera, USB4, Bluetooth, etc. With a new kernel patch, the GPU for the Snapdragon X Elite (X1E80100) is being disabled by default.
Linux 6.11 To Offer More Fine-Tuned Control Over Swappiness
As part of the memory management changes expected to be merged for the upcoming Linux 6.11 cycle is allowing more fine-tuned control over the swappiness setting used to determine how aggressively pages are swapped out of physical system memory and into the on-disk swap space.
Rust Safety Standard Proposed For The Linux Kernel
While Rust is viewed as a memory safe and robust programming language, there is the "unsafe" keyword within Rust that can be used for unsafe code that grants "unsafe superpowers" for the language. As dealing with Rust at low-levels as the Linux kernel can lead to needing to use "unsafe" Rust at times, a documentation standard has been proposed for dealing with such code inside the kernel.
The Linux Kernel Matures To Having A Minimum Rust Toolchain Version
Nearly every Linux kernel cycle has bought patches to bump the version of the Rust language targeted by the kernel as it worked toward having a suitable minimum version. With the latest Linux kernel patches, it looks like we may be finally approaching the point where a safe minimum version can be specified and for the Linux kernel to in turn allow supporting multiple different versions of the Rust compiler.
KDE Plasma 6.2 To Support libinput's Auto-Scrolling Feature
It's been a busy start to July with KDE developers tackling more features for Plasma 6.2 while continuing to deliver fixes to the modern KDE Plasma desktop stack.
And the most popular reviews / featured articles for the past month:
AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370: 100+ Benchmarks Validate Zen 5's Captivating Power Efficiency & Performance
With the AMD Zen 5 generation, the timing is interesting where it's not the desktop processors launching first but happens to be in the form of AMD Ryzen AI 300 series laptops. With the last minute delay of the Ryzen 900 series by 1~2 weeks, the embargo lift for the Ryzen AI 300 series is timed for this Sunday morning where I can now present the first AMD Zen 5 Linux benchmark results. And with being the first Zen 5 chip in my lab, I have been pushing it hard... Here is an extensive look at the ASUS Zenbook S 16 I received with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 current flagship SoC compared to a variety of other AMD and Intel laptop models. The focus was on both the raw performance and the package performance-per-Watt for the overall power efficiency of this Zen 5 SoC. And with it being the first Zen 5 hardware in the lab, I didn't limit the selection to just conventional laptop workloads but also explored the performance characteristics for various other workloads of interest to diverse Linux users and for an idea of the HX 370 potential or similar Zen 5 chips appearing in thin client / edge / IoT type devices. This initial taste of AMD Zen 5 has me extremely excited about the performance potential of the upcoming Ryzen 9000 series and EPYC Turin processors.
AMD Zen 4 vs. Intel Core Ultra 7 "Meteor Lake" In 400+ Benchmarks On Linux 6.10
In part for preparing for upcoming Linux testing of AMD Ryzen AI 300 series laptops, I've been re-benchmarking various Intel/AMD laptops around the lab at Phoronix. In today's article is a fresh look at how the existing AMD Zen 4 laptop performance in the form of the popular Framework 13 and Framework 16 laptops is competing with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" SoC while using Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and upgrading to the latest Linux 6.10 development kernel as well as the newest Mesa open-source graphics driver support.
AMD Ryzen 7000/8000 Series vs. 14th Gen Intel Core CPU Performance On Linux 6.10 With 400+ Benchmarks
In preparation for upcoming CPU launches I have been spending the past month re-testing the various Intel Core and AMD Ryzen current generation processors on the very latest Linux software stack and latest system BIOS along with some updated and new benchmarks. For those wanting a fresh look at how the current AMD Ryzen 7000 and 8000 series processors are competing with 14th Gen Intel Core (Raptor Lake Refresh) processors, this article is for you with 18 processors and 443 benchmarks being carried out while using Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and upgrading to the Linux 6.10 development kernel.
AWS Graviton4 96-Core Performance vs. AMD EPYC & Intel Xeon CPUs
Last week I published some initial benchmarks of the Amazon/AWS Graviton4 processors now available within the EC2 cloud using the new "R8g" instances. That initial comparison was a 64 vCPU comparison of Graviton4 against AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon 64 vCPU AWS instances. In today's article is a look at the 96-core Graviton4 bare metal performance using the "r8g.metal-24xl" AWS instance type. The Graviton4 r8g.metal-24xl performance was then compared in today's article against various bare metal AMD EPYC, Ampere Altra Max, and Intel Xeon processors in the lab at Phoronix.
NVIDIA's Open-Source Linux Kernel Driver Performing At Parity To Proprietary Driver
With the recently introduced NVIDIA 555 Linux driver stable series their open-source GPU kernel driver modules are in great shape across consumer and professional graphics products. Over the past two years the support has evolved so much that NVIDIA is now promoting their open-source kernel driver usage and with the NVIDIA 560 Linux driver beta posted this week they are defaulting to using their open-source kernel driver modules in place of the proprietary option -- on the Turing and newer GPUs supported by the open-source code. Here is a fresh look at the impact.
AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Benchmarks: The Fantastic Power Efficiency Of Zen 5
As noted in yesterday's launch-day AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 review with 100+ benchmarks, I've also been testing an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Zen 5 laptop too. Here are those initial benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 as the 10-core / 20-thread laptop Zen 5 SoC. Like with the HX 370 testing, the Ryzen AI 9 365 continues to reinforce the great power efficiency uplift of Zen 5 as one of the most exciting advancements. In fact, for many benchmarks the Ryzen AI 9 365 was delivering even greater performance per Watt than the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.
Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365
After seeing how the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Zen 5 Strix Point performance is under Linux against a range of other Intel/AMD laptops, the next obvious question is... how does this compare to Windows? In this article is an initial look at the Windows 11 versus Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Linux performance for the same AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 SoC within an ASUS Zenbook S16 and running the same benchmarks in looking at the out-of-the-box performance difference.
AWS Graviton4 Benchmarks Prove To Deliver The Best ARM Cloud Server Performance
This week AWS announced that Graviton4 went into GA with the new R8G instances after Amazon originally announced their Graviton4 ARM64 server processors last year as built atop Arm Neoverse-V2 cores. I eagerly fired up some benchmarks myself and I was surprised by the generational uplift compared to Graviton3. At the same vCPU counts, the new Graviton4 cores are roughly matching Intel Sapphire Rapids performance while being able to tango with the AMD EPYC "Genoa" and consistently showing terrific generational uplift.
AMD vs. NVIDIA Vulkan Ray-Tracing Performance On Linux With Breaking Limit
Basemark last week released GPUScore: Breaking Limit as a "groundbreaking cross-platform ray-tracing benchmark" that is scalable from mobile to desktops. They self-describe Breaking Limit as "the world's first true cross-platform benchmark for ray tracing." Given that and the benchmark meeting my benchmarking criteria, I've been trying it out on various AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards under Linux.
Amazon's Graviton Has Evolved Into A Formidable CPU Contender: Graviton1 To Graviton4 Benchmarks
Amazon's Graviton4 server processor that recently went into GA in the AWS cloud is easily the most competitive AArch64 server processor we've seen to date and proving capable of being able to compete with Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors across various workloads. Since Graviton4 went GA on AWS earlier this month I've looked at the Graviton4 comparison to other instances at 64 vCPUs and also comparing the Graviton4 96-core metal performance to various Intel, Ampere, and AMD processors. Given the interest in those Graviton4 benchmarks, today's article is another look at Graviton4 looking at the metal performance compared to prior generation Graviton3, Graviton2, and Graviton1 instances for showing just how far Amazon's Graviton processor performance has evolved.
1 Comment
