Intel Publishes AVX10.2 Documentation, GCC Compiler Enablement Begins For AVX10.2

([Intel] 1 August 06:50 AM EDT Intel AVX10.2)

Intel closed out July by publishing AVX10.2 technical details as part of a now public document. Intel's compiler engineers are also already at work on enabling AVX10.2 in the GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers.

Linux 6.11, Ryzen AI 300 Series, Open-Source NVIDIA Kernel Driver & Other July News

([Phoronix] 1 August 06:35 AM EDT July 2024 Recap)

July was an interesting month both in the open-source software world with the Linux 6.11 merge window and other software milestones while also being eventful on the hardware side with the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series launch as the first of the Zen 5 processors. During July on Phoronix were 255 original news articles written by your's truly and another 15 featured articles / multi-page reviews.

Blumenkrantz Continues On Big Mesa Code Refactoring

([Mesa] 1 August 06:24 AM EDT "THE JUICIEST REFACTOR EVER")

Mike Blumenkrantz of Valve's Linux graphics driver team has recently begun pushing changes to the Mesa 3D graphics code-base as part of "The Juiciest Refactor Ever". After merging the first of the patches last week, this week has brought more code for this juicy refactoring.

Serpent OS Publishes First Pre-Alpha Operating System Image

([Operating Systems] 1 August 05:57 AM EDT Serpent OS Prealpha0)

For those intrigued by Ikey Doherty's work in recent times on Serpent OS as a new from-scratch Linux distribution that makes use of lots of tooling, Ikey is kicking off August by releasing the first pre-alpha image of this Linux OS.

GCC 14.2 Compiler Brings Latest Fixes - Including Adjustments For AMD Zen 4 / Zen 5

([GNU] 1 August 06:30 AM EDT GCC 14.2)

GCC 14.2 hit the Internet today as the first stable point release update to the GCC 14 series following the inaugural GCC 14.1 stable release from early May.

Testing The AMD Heterogeneous Core Topology Linux Patches On Ryzen AI 300 Series

([AMD] 31 July 03:15 PM EDT Strix Point Heterogenous Core Topology)

Now that I am through with my testing of the initial Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and Ryzen AI 9 365 Linux performance benchmarking and support exploration, I've begun diving in to other areas of the Linux support/performance for these Zen 5 "Strix Point" SoCs. The area for a quick look today is with the yet-to-be-merged AMD Heterogeneous Core Topology patches.

ARM Linux Maintainer Drafts Deprecation Timeline For Old Boards/Features

([Arm] 31 July 02:07 PM EDT Dropping More Old Boards)

ARM Linux maintainer Arnd Bergmann laid out a proposal with deprecation timeline today for beginning to work toward removing many older ARM boards and obsolete features.

Mesa 24.2-rc3 Released With More Intel Xe2 Graphics Fixes

([Mesa] 31 July 01:35 PM EDT Mesa 24.2-rc3)

Mesa 24.2 is barreling towards its stable release in August while out today is the third weekly release candidate for this set of open-source OpenGL, Vulkan, and video acceleration drivers.

AmpereOne Aurora In Development With Up To 512 Cores, AmpereOne Prices Published

([Processors] 31 July 11:00 AM EDT 5 Comments)

Ampere Computing hosted an AmpereOne architecture briefing this week where more details were shared on their long talked about AArch64 server processors. This announcement finally included a SKU table with suggested pricing as well as talking up a next-gen "AmpereOne Aurora" offering for a processor with up to 512 cores and some newly-disclosed Ampere AI acceleration IP.

Xen 4.19 Released With New 9pfs Backend, Scales Up To 16,383 CPUs

([Virtualization] 31 July 10:20 AM EDT Xen Hypervisor 4.19)

The Xen Project has announced version Xen 4.19 of this open-source hypervisor that is rolling out security improvements, performance and scalability enhancements, and other refinements to this cross-architecture option for open-source virtualization.

Servo Web Engine Now Leverages Multiple CPU Cores For Rendering HTML Tables

([Free Software] 31 July 08:52 AM EDT Servo Engine)

The Servo project is out with their latest monthly status report to highlight advancements made on this open-source, Rust-written web layout engine.

Glibc Patch Being Reviewed For getrandom vDSO Support

([Programming] 31 July 06:48 AM EDT getrandom in the vDSO)

One of the many exciting features merged for Linux 6.11 is getrandom() in the vDSO for very fast yet secure random number generation. Now that the kernel bits have landed, it's on to making use of it in the GNU C Library and other libc implementations.

Linux Seeing Support For Another ~$230 ARM Handheld Game Console

([Hardware] 31 July 06:25 AM EDT GameForce Ace)

There's been no shortage of cheap, ARM-based handheld game consoles coming to market. Given Linux on Arm tending to work better than Windows and in keeping vendor costs to a minimum, they've tended to be running Linux or Android with various open-source games/emulators. Many of the vendors have kept their Linux support downstream while with time more of these gaming handheld consoles are seeing mainline Linux support. Yet another one being worked on for mainline Linux kernel support is the GameForce Ace.

Linux's Turbostat Utility Can Now Be Used For Reading Intel PMT Counters

([Linux Kernel] 31 July 06:16 AM EDT turbostat)

Merged on Sunday prior to tagging the first release candidate of Linux 6.11 were some last minute updates to Turbostat, the tool that lives within the kernel source tree and used for reporting CPU frequency and idle statistics along with other useful metrics. With Linux 6.11, Turbostat is gaining some new abilities.

SDL3 Library Adds A Built-In Snake Game

([Linux Gaming] 31 July 06:07 AM EDT SDL Snake Game)

For those enjoying the classic game Snake (Blockade) or rather wanting to learn about the SDL3 API to develop your own software using this cross-platform software/hardware abstraction library, a game of Snake has been added to the SDL3 repository to serve as a more full-featured example.

Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake & Battlemage Graphics Might Be Officially Supported With Linux 6.12

([Intel] 30 July 08:30 PM EDT Intel Xe Driver DRM-Next)

While the Linux 6.11 merge window ended just days ago, Intel engineers are already beginning to submit kernel graphics driver changes to the DRM-Next branch of material they want to get in for the Linux 6.12 cycle that will end out 2024. Notable is they are trying to wrap up the Xe2 graphics support for Lunar Lake and Battlemage discrete graphics so that the support can be exposed by default.

oneAPI Construction Kit 4.0 Brings RISC-V Host CPU Support

([Intel] 30 July 03:35 PM EDT oneAPI Construction Kit)

Last year the oneAPI Construction Kit was introduced by Intel-owned Codeplay Software for bringing SYCL to new hardware even for hardware outside of Intel's offerings. One of the early targets of this oneAPI Construction Kit support was for RISC-V processors and now with today's release of oneAPI Construction Kit 4.0 there is finally RISC-V host CPU support.

Intel Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" Launching 3 September

([Intel] 30 July 01:47 PM EDT Lunar Lake Launch Date)

With the AMD Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" laptops now shipping this week, Intel has announced that their Intel Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" processors as the successor to Meteor Lake will be formally launching on 3 September.

Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For The AMD Ryzen AI 9 365

([Operating Systems] 30 July 12:39 PM EDT 19 Comments)

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.

Mesa's Freedreno Gallium3D Driver Lands Initial Adreno 700 Series Support

([Mesa] 30 July 10:36 AM EDT A7xx Support)

Since last year there's been support available in the MSM DRM kernel driver for Qualcomm's Adreno 700 series graphics processors. There's also been some Adreno 700 series support in TURNIP as the Mesa Vulkan driver for these newer Adreno GPUs. Now finally the Freedreno Gallium3D driver has merged initial Adreno 700 series support for the Mesa 24.3 release.