AMD EPYC Genoa, Linux 6.1 & Rust Efforts Excited Linux Users In November

Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 1 December 2022 at 06:30 AM EST. 1 Comment
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With November now in the books, here is a look back at the most popular original open-source/Linux content on Phoronix from the 245 original articles written by your's truly over the past month. It was an extremely exciting month given the launch of the AMD EPYC 9004 "Genoa" processors with up to 96 cores per socket, AVX-512, and with all of the improvements meant outright insane generational improvement and currently slaughtering the competition. The Linux 6.1 kernel nearing the limelight, early development work on Linux 6.2, and the continued embracing of the Rust programming language by the open-source ecosystem all made for an interesting November.

November was a very interesting month with all of the software and hardware happenings. Though from an operations side remains difficult at Phoronix due to the rampant ad-block usage by readers and the overall sad state of the web ad industry right now paired with the global economic conditions. If you enjoy reading the original content on Phoronix each and every day, consider showing your support via joining Phoronix Premium to enjoy the site ad-free and multi-page articles on a single page. Any holiday tips are also welcome via PayPal or Stripe. You can also give a follow on Facebook and Twitter.

When it came to the Linux hardware reviews in November, most exciting for the month was easily the new AMD EPYC 9004 series processors and their incredible performance potential. On the desktop side, Intel Raptor Lake continues exciting Linux users. The most viewed articles/reviews were:

AMD EPYC 9554 & EPYC 9654 Benchmarks - Outstanding Performance For Linux HPC/Servers
After showcasing the AMD EPYC 9004 "Genoa" series and geeking out over AMD's reference platform running the Linux-powered open-source OpenBMC, it's time to move on to benchmarking. For evaluating the EPYC Genoa performance under Linux, AMD kindly provided review samples of the EPYC 9654 flagship 96-core processor, the EPYC 9554 64-core processor, and the EPYC 9374F 32-core high frequency CPU. In today's benchmark review I am looking at the EPYC 9554/9654 CPUs while the EPYC 9374F will be featured in its own review in the coming days on Phoronix.

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X vs. Core i9 11900K AVX-512 Performance Analysis
While initially leary of AMD Zen 4's "double pumped" approach for supporting AVX-512 using a 256-bit data path, it's proven to be very efficient for performance and yield great results without negative clock impairments or wreaking havoc on the power consumption. Back in September I delivered a detailed AVX-512 performance analysis on the Ryzen 9 7950X while in this article is a detailed benchmark look at the Core i9 11900K against the Ryzen 7 7700X. The Core i9 11900K being the currently last Intel desktop CPU officially supporting AVX-512 while the Ryzen 7 7700X was used for matching the core/thread count of that Rocket Lake processor for this AVX-512 on/off comparison.

AMD AOCC 4.0 vs. GCC vs. LLVM Clang Compiler Benchmarks On Zen 4
Last week when launching the AMD EPYC 9004 "Genoa" processors, AMD released AOCC 4.0 as the newest version of their optimizing C/C++ compiler that now supports their Zen 4 micro-architecture. Last week I ran some initial AOCC 4.0 benchmarks and this LLVM/Clang downstream was looking rather favorable in relation to upstream LLVM/Clang, while since then I've been able to conduct more thorough benchmarks across a wide variety of C/C++ open-source workloads. Here is that more extensive round of AOCC 4.0 benchmarking against the open-source LLVM/Clang and AOCC compilers.

The Epic Gains Made In 5 Years For AMD EPYC 7601 Naples vs. Newest 4th Gen EPYC Genoa
The AMD EPYC 4th Gen "Genoa" processor performance has been outright phenomenal. These new AMD server processors have shown stunnning performance with up to 96 cores per socket and beyond the increased core count is now up to 12 channels of DDR5-4800 memory and most significantly in the HPC space is the introduction of AVX-512 support with Zen 4. Even the 32-core high frequency Genoa performance has been dominating against Intel's current Xeon Scalable competition. While AMD EPYC Genoa brings very impressive gains generation-over-generation and against the current Xeon Ice Lake CPUs, curiosity got the best of me for seeing how the new AMD EPYC CPUs compare to AMD's original EPYC 1st Gen "Naples" flagship - the EPYC 7601 2P. Here are Genoa benchmarks showing how far the AMD server/HPC CPU performance has evolved over the past five years since Naples.

AMD EPYC 9374F Linux Benchmarks - Genoa's 32-Core High Frequency CPU
Last week for the AMD EPYC 4th Gen "Genoa" launch day I published initial AMD EPYC 9554 and EPYC 9654 Linux benchmarks as part of my review. Those 64-core and 96-core Zen 4 processors performed phenomenally with Genoa having AVX-512, twelve channels of DDR5-4800 system memory support, higher TDP allowance, and other improvements over prior Milan(X) server processors. The other SKU that AMD sent over for review is the EPYC 9374F as their new 32-core high frequency part. For less than $5k, the EPYC 9374F is a high frequency Zen 4 32-core part with a 320 Watt TDP. Today's benchmarks are looking at the EPYC 9374F against the EPYC 9554/9654 and various other AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon Scalable processors under Linux.

Testing Six Different Linux Distributions On The Intel Core i9 13900K "Raptor Lake"
For those wondering about the out-of-the-box performance of different modern Linux distributions when running the new Intel Raptor Lake processors, here are six different distributions running on the current flagship Core i9 13900K processor. Tested this round was CentOS Stream 9, Clear Linux, Debian Bookworm (Testing), EndeavourOS, Fedora Workstation 37, and Ubuntu 22.10.

AMD Reveals More Details Around The Radeon RX 7900 Series / RDNA3
Earlier this month AMD announced the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX with availability set for 13 December. Meanwhile today the embargo lifts on more details surrounding the RDNA3 architecture and these new graphics cards.

The Intel Core i9 13900K "Raptor Lake" Performance From Linux 5.15 To Linux 6.1
For those of you upgrading to an Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" system this holiday season, here are some benchmarks looking at how the varying kernel versions affect the Core i9 13900K flagship performance. Testing started using the Linux 5.15 LTS kernel shipped by Ubuntu 22.04 LTS currently and ends with the Linux 6.1 Git snapshot of that kernel nearing its official release and what is expected to be this year's LTS kernel version.

AMD Launches EPYC 9004 "Genoa" Processors - Up To 96 Cores, AVX-512, Incredible Performance
Following September's successful launch of the AMD Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors, today AMD is lifting the embargo on their EPYC 9004 series "Genoa" server processors. EPYC Genoa takes AMD server processors to the new SP5 socket, up to 96 cores / 192 threads per socket, AVX-512 with Zen 4, twelve channels of DDR5 system memory, and much more -- all combined it puts AMD and the industry at new levels of HPC performance. I've been benchmarking the AMD EPYC Genoa processors the past few weeks to astounding success. This article is looking more at the feature set and platform for Genoa while separately are my initial AMD EPYC 9554 / EPYC 9654 Linux review and benchmarks.

AMD AOCC 4.0 Arrives For Squeezing More Performance Out Of Zen 4
On Thursday when launching AMD 4th Gen EPYC Genoa processors, AMD also published AOCC 4.0 as the newest version of the AMD Optimizing C/C++ Compiler. I've been putting it through its paces the past day and continues showing the positive performance impact of proper compiler tuning.

And the most popular news of them onth on Phoronix:

The Linux Kernel Has Been Forcing Different Behavior For Processes Starting With "X"
An ugly hack within the Linux kernel that has been in mainline for over three years has been called out. Due to a buggy X.Org Server / xf86-video-modesetting DDX, the Linux kernel has been imposing different behavior on whether a process starts with "X" and in turn disable the atomic mode-setting support.

AMD Finally Opens Up Its Radeon Raytracing Analyzer "RRA" Source Code
This summer AMD announced the Radeon Raytracing Analyzer "RRA" as part of their developer software suite for helping to profile ray-tracing performance/issues on Windows and Linux with both Direct3D 12 and the Vulkan API. Initially the RRA 1.0 release was binary-only but now AMD has made good on their "GPUOpen" approach and made it open-source.

Wayland Protocol Finally Ready For Fractional Scaling
After many months of work, the wp-fractional-scale-v1 protocol for Wayland is set to be merged imminently for fractional scaling support.

Linux Moving Ahead With Enabling Kernel IBT By Default
As an enhancement to the out-of-the-box Linux kernel in its default x86_64 configuration, it was being eyed to enable Indirect Branch Tracking by default. That change to enable IBT by default has been picked up by TIP's x86/core branch, thus putting it on deck as material for submitting with next month's Linux 6.2 merge window.

UFS File-Based Optimization Patches For Linux: Shot Down As "Complete & Utter Madness"
JEDEC recently outlined an extension to Universal Flash Storage (UFS) for File-Based Optimizations (FBO) to enhance the performance of UFS devices. A Xiaomi engineer sent out a set of Linux kernel patches for implementing UFS FBO in the name of better performance, but with almost immediate rejection by a veteran Linux kernel maintainer.

The Godot Game Engine Now Has Its Own Foundation
The Godot open-source game engine had been part of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) as many open-source projects utilize for handling fiscal sponsorship duties and the like while now the Godot Foundation has been established as its own legal entity.

Rust-Written Redox OS 0.8 Released With i686 Support, Audio & Multi-Display Working
After more than a half-year of development work, Redox OS 0.8 released today as the newest version of this from-scratch, Rust-written open-source operating system.

Google Moves Ahead With Providing No-Cost Open-Source Silicon Manufacturing From GlobalFoundries
Google announced funding for silicon manufacturing for participating open-source projects using the process design kit with GlobalFoundries.

Wayland Protocols 1.30 Introduces New Protocol To Allow Screen Tearing
In the early days of Wayland one of the main philosophical driving points for this alternative to the X.Org Server was that "every frame is perfect" and would forego screen tearing among other rendering impurities. Introduced now with Wayland Protocols 1.30 though is a new staging protocol to allow screen tearing.

Intel Clarifies HECI Usage For Arc Graphics' GSC
Stemming from the recent discussion of Intel's open-source Linux driver for Arc Graphics not yet running on POWER, another rather interesting support caveat was also raised. It turns out updating the GSC firmware for Arc Graphics hardware currently requires the Intel Management Engine (ME) functionality, which basically limits the graphics card firmware updating in turn to systems with Intel CPUs. (Update: See end of article.)

Intel's IWD 2.0 Released For Modern Linux Wireless Daemon
One of countless great open-source projects from Intel over the years is IWD as a modern wireless daemon for WiFi devices on Linux. IWD has been in the works for over a half-decade as a new replacement to wpa_supplicant and with time has implemented many features and seen widespread adoption. Released this week was IWD 2.0 as the latest milestone for this open-source wireless daemon.

GIMP 2.99.14 Released As Another Step Toward GIMP 3.0
GIMP 2.99.14 is out this weekend as the latest development release on the way toward the elusive GIMP 3.0.

DXVK 2.0 Released With Many Improvements For Direct3D Over Vulkan
DXVK 2.0 is out as a major update to this Direct3D on Vulkan implementation used by Steam Play (Proton) for enjoying D3D9 to D3D11 Windows games on Linux with great speed.

Red Hat Developers Announce Work On New "Composefs" File-System
Red Hat engineers this morning for the first time publicly announced their work on Composefs, a new opportunistically-sharing and verified image file-system.

AMD Releases Brotli-G For GPU-Accelerated Brotli Compression
After open-sourcing its Radeon Raytracing Analyzer code last week, this week AMD's GPUOpen team has a new open-source project announcement: Brotli-G.

Proton 7.0-5 Gets More Games Running On Linux & The Steam Deck
Valve has officially released Proton 7.0-5 as the newest version of their Wine downstream that powers Steam Play for enjoying countless Windows games on Linux, most notably now with the Steam Deck. Valve has also introduced "Proton Next" as their new testing grounds for future Proton updates.

Microsoft .NET 7 Released With Better Linux Support, Improved Performance
Microsoft on Tuesday released .NET 7 with improved Linux support, better performance, and many new features throughout this Microsoft platform stack.

Microsoft Promotes Windows Subsystem For Linux "WSL" To GA Status
While the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has been around for six years now and with WSL2 is on to running graphical Linux apps with GPU acceleration and a wide array of capabilities, including the ability to run systemd and the like, only today has Microsoft promoted WSL to "general availability" status on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Rust Developers Move Ahead With Preparing To Upstream More Code Into The Linux Kernel
With the upcoming Linux 6.1 kernel release there is the initial Rust infrastructure merged for enabling the use of the Rust programming language for future kernel drivers and other kernel code. But that state in Linux 6.1 is the very basics and not yet practical while now a secondary sent of "Rust for Linux" patches have been sent out for enabling more kernel development to happen with Rust.

Fedora Linux Cleared To Pursue Its Modern C Porting
Proposed last month was a Fedora 40 change proposal for "porting Fedora to modern C" that amounts to tightening its C language legacy support. This change focused on ensuring packaged C code is compliant with strict C99 compilers has now been signed off on by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo).
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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