openSUSE Tumbleweed Rolls Out Optional x86-64-v3 Optimized Packages

The rolling-release openSUSE Tumbleweed package has begun rolling out a new "patterns-glibc-hwcaps-x86_64_v3" package that is automatically installed on supported systems and allows for automatically installing "recommended" x86-64-v3 optimized packages where available in the name of enjoying greater performance.

This is making use of the now-widely-deployed x86-64 micro-architecture feature levels plumbed into the open-source compiler toolchains, Glibc hardware capabilities "HWCAPS" detection, and related for allowing optimized libraries to be automatically on supported processors.

OpenSUSE Tumblewed began transitioning to an x86-64-v2 requirement that roughly correlates to old Intel Nehalem era hardware. With x86-64-v3 is where AVX2 and BMI/BMI2 requirements are introduced that roughly correlate to Intel Haswell era processors and newer.

This move by openSUSE Tumbleweed joins the likes of Arch Linux with optional x86-64-v3 optimized packages. Over x86-64-v2, the particular extensions with "v3" include AVX, AVX2, BMI1, BMI2, F16C, FMA, LZCNT, MOVBE, and XSAVE.

Over on news.opensuse.org are more details on the optional x86-64-v3 support. So far though only a limited number of packages have received x86-64-v3 builds while more are expected over time once seeing where it's worthwhile to provide this higher stepping. Those not wanting these packages can remove the patterns-glibc-hwcaps-x86_64_v3 package.

It's great seeing more distributions provide x86-64-v3 package builds and hopefully they deliver a more robust package set of these optimized binaries soon.