ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

GCC Developers Discuss Dropping Poorly Supported, Niche CPU Architectures

([GNU] 13 August 06:15 AM EDT GCC Compiler)

Following the discussion over potentially obsoleting/deprecating the Itanium IA-64 support within the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), developers are discussing similar treatment for some of the other poorly-maintained CPU ports.



Go 1.25 Released With Experimental GC Yielding 10~40% Overhead Reduction

([Programming] 12 August 08:15 PM EDT Go 1.25)

Go 1.25 is out today as the newest half-year update to this popular programming language. What I find most exciting with Go 1.25 is the new experimental garbage collector yielding 10~40% reduction in overhead.



Linux Address Space Isolation "ASI" Revived After Lowering 70% Performance Hit To 13%

([Linux Security] 12 August 04:53 PM EDT ASI)

Several years ago Google engineers began exploring address space isolation for the Linux kernel and ultimately proposing Linux ASI for better dealing with CPU speculative execution attacks. While the hope was it would better cope with the ever growing list of CPU speculative execution vulnerabilities, the effort was thwarted initially by I/O throughput seeing a 70% performance hit. That level of performance cost was unsustainable. But now that I/O overhead has been reduced to just 13%.



Intel CPU Microcode Updates Released For Six High Severity Vulnerabilities

([Intel] 12 August 01:13 PM EDT Intel CPU Microcode)

This Patch Tuesday has brought a slew of Intel CPU microcode updates for the past few processor generations to address six new high severity vulnerabilities.



CodeWeavers CrossOver 25.1 Improves The Stability Of Microsoft Office On Linux

([Linux Gaming] 12 August 12:25 PM EDT CrossOver 25.1)

While most Linux gamers are content using Valve's Steam Play (Proton) these days for Linux gaming, a new release of CodeWeavers' CrossOver is now available for enjoying other Windows applications and games on Linux as well as macOS. CrossOver 25.1 enhances the stability of the Microsoft Office office suite on Linux among other changes.



Linux Kernel Patched For AMD SEV-SNP Cache Coherency Vulnerability

([AMD] 12 August 12:17 PM EDT SNP Cache Coherency Issue)

This Patch Tuesday the only new security fix merged to the Linux kernel is addressing a vulnerability affecting AMD SEV-SNP secure virtual machines.



Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 Released With Completed 64-bit Support, Rust Ported

([Debian] 12 August 09:25 AM EDT Debian Hurd 2025)

Following this weekend's release of Debian 13.0 "Trixie", Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 has been released as the state of Trixie while running atop Hurd rather than Linux.



AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 With Framework Desktop vs. Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Linux Performance

([Processors] 12 August 09:33 AM EDT 22 Comments)

Last week alongside our Framework Desktop review with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" SoC I posted benchmarks of the Strix Halo performance compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X / 9950X3D socketed desktop processors. For those wondering similarly how the top-end Strix Halo SoC in the Framework Desktop competes with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" flagship in performance and power efficiency, here are those comparison benchmarks.



NVIDIA 580.76.05 Linux Driver Updates EGL Bits, Adds New MetaMode Attribute

([NVIDIA] 12 August 08:51 AM EDT NVIDIA 580.76.05)

Following the NVIDIA 580 Linux beta driver from just one week ago, today NVIDIA issued a new R580 series Linux driver build.



ZLUDA Implements Kernel Cache Support To Help With Performance

([Free Software] 12 August 08:10 AM EDT ZLUDA Kernel Cache)

ZLUDA as the open-source solution bringing CUDA to non-NVIDIA hardware has been seeing a nice uptick in activity the past several months for its latest take on life. The latest feature merged to ZLUDA is the all-important kernel cache to help with performance.



Itanium IA-64 Support May Revert Back To Being Deprecated/Obsolete For GCC 16

([GNU] 12 August 07:37 AM EDT Itanium IA-64)

The GCC 14 compiler had marked the Itanium IA-64 code as being obsolete and slated for removal in GCC 15. But then last year the Itanium port was un-deprecated with plans to "support this for some years to come." Now one year later it's back to talking about deprecating/obsoleting the Itanium IA-64 compiler code in GCC.



Intel Adds Another Battlemage BMG-G21 PCI ID To Their Linux Driver

([Intel] 12 August 06:35 AM EDT 0xe209)

Intel has introduced another new PCI device ID to their open-source Linux graphics driver stack for signifying another likely product on the way based on the Battlemage BMG-G21 GPU.



Fedora 43 Approved To Ship Hare Programming Language Support, Hardlinking Default

([Fedora] 12 August 06:21 AM EDT Fedora 43)

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) this week approved a number of additional features for the upcoming Fedora Linux 43 release.



Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Increases Wayland Compatibility, UI Enhancements

([Operating Systems] 12 August 06:06 AM EDT Linux Mint 22.2)

The beta release of Linux Mint 22.2 "Zara" is now available for testing of this popular desktop Linux distribution built atop an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base.



Intel Releases LLM-Scaler 1.0 As Part Of Project Battlematrix

([Intel] 11 August 08:27 PM EDT LLM-Scaler 1.0)

Intel today announced their August 2025 Software Update to Project Battlematrix and the release of the LLM-Scaler 1.0 container for optimized AI inference support on Intel Arc B-Series graphics hardware.



Early Linux 6.17 Tests Show Some AMD Strix Halo Performance Improvements & Regressions

([Linux Kernel] 11 August 03:55 PM EDT Linux 6.17 Benchmarks)

Even prior to the Linux 6.17-rc1 release on Sunday I already had kicked off some Linux 6.17 Git benchmarking in being eager to see how the performance is beginning to shape up for this next kernel release that is set to power the likes of Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43. There is some good news and bad news with my early testing on the ZBook Ultra G1a for AMD Strix Halo.



Updated Inclusive Language Guide Calls Out "Sanity Check", "Hung", "Native Support"

([Free Software] 11 August 03:38 PM EDT Linux Foundation AOUSD / AWSF)

The Linux Foundation's Alliance for OpenUSD "AOUSD" and the Academy Software Foundation "ASWF" announced today an updated Inclusive Language Guide.



Intel Posts Latest Patches For DRM Sharpness Property To Enjoy With Lunar Lake & Beyond

([Intel] 11 August 02:38 PM EDT DRM Sharpness Property)

For over a year now Intel has been working on a new DRM sharpness property for making use of Lunar Lake's new adaptive sharpening filter capabilities built into its display engine. This new sharpening filter with Lunar Lake and future SoCs can hep with sharpening blurred or upscaled content and over the past year has gone through several rounds of code review. The latest patches were sent out last week for this DRM sharpness property.



LunarG Announces KosmicKrisp As Vulkan-On-Metal Mesa Driver

([Mesa] 11 August 10:32 AM EDT KosmicKrisp)

While there is already MoltenVK for Vulkan implemented over Apple's Metal graphics API, the graphics engineers at LunarG have announced KosmicKrisp as a Mesa-based driver implementing Vulkan over Metal.



AMD EPYC 4545P Achieves 2.24x The Performance At Half The Power Of The First EPYC CPU

([Processors] 11 August 09:10 AM EDT 9 Comments)

Recently we looked at the performance of the AMD EPYC 4545P that is a 16 core 65 Watt processor in the EPYC 4005 "Grado" series. This is quite an interesting processor for those after low-power servers, edge AI deployments, and other purposes with no similar Ryzen 9000 series processor or competition from Intel offering sixteen performance cores at around 65 Watts. Complementing all the performance and power data from that review article, here are some additional tests putting its performance and efficiency compared to the original AMD EPYC 7601 flagship processor that ushered in the EPYC family eight years ago.



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It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
-- Woody Allen