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Valve Continued Doing A Lot For Linux Gaming & Open-Source Radeon Drivers In 2020

Phoronix | Dec. 30, 2020, 6:13 a.m. | Original

Valve this year continued contributing significantly to not only improving the Linux gaming experience but also the Linux desktop at large with their continued open-source graphics driver enhancements and other infrastructure work.

Open-source driver developers working under contract for Valve continued pushing along the open-source Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver, pushed the "ACO" compiler back-end for RADV into excellent shape that it's now enabled by default and delivers excellent performance, continued work on the Linux VR support as well as their engagements with Collabora

Nouveau Sees Fix To Properly Handle Mini DP Connectors - Avoids GNOME Mutter Crashing

Phoronix | Dec. 30, 2020, 5:54 a.m. | Original

The open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" driver in Linux 5.11 didn't see any exciting features but there is now a patch pending for this DRM driver so it will at least handle mini DisplayPort connections properly.

While Mini DisplayPort is just a miniaturized version of DisplayPort, a missing explicit check for the mDP connector was leading to problems.

This tiny patch is needed for Nouveau to properly handle Mini DisplayPort outputs, which up to now was otherwise being recognized as Embedded DisplayPort. This prior behavior caused troubles as

Intel

New Intel Linux Features, Timely Hardware Support & More From Intel In 2020

Phoronix | Dec. 30, 2020, 12:08 a.m. | Original

Intel engineers continued with their decade plus tradition of providing timely hardware support (sans the discrete graphics bring-up taking a bit longer), Intel continued showing what's possible with Linux performance by means of Clear Linux, and yes more security updates were among their popular interactions in 2020.

Intel remains on point with their punctual Linux hardware support and they remain one of the largest contributors to the Linux kernel - they remain an excellent example of how hardware vendors and organizations at large can interact optimally and contribute

The HSA Foundation Has Been Eerily Quiet As We Roll Into 2021

Phoronix | Dec. 29, 2020, 6:25 p.m. | Original

Much of the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) steam was lost when AMD began focusing on its Radeon Open eCosystem (ROCm) software stack. While AMD was just one of several founding members, there doesn't seem to be much going on for the HSA effort as we roll into 2021 and in fact their website has been down for an extended period of time.

There hasn't been any real HSA news in a while since AMD began focusing on ROCm as its open-source compute stack,

Mesa's Freedreno Gallium3D Now Exposes OpenGL 3.2 Support

Phoronix | Dec. 29, 2020, 3:13 p.m. | Original

Mesa 21.0 has flipped on support for allowing OpenGL 3.2 contexts with the Freedreno Gallium3D driver that provides open-source GL support for Qualcomm Adreno hardware.

OpenGL 3.1 support was advertised while all OpenGL 3.2 functionality was since wired up. Eric Anholt as a result has now exposed the OpenGL 3.2 support by flipping on GLSL 150 for Adreno 600 series and newer Qualcomm GPUs.

The code was merged today as the latest open-source Qualcomm graphics improvement

AMD Wowed Linux Users In 2020 With Their Fantastic Zen 3 CPUs, Timely New Open-Source GPU Support

Phoronix | Dec. 29, 2020, 1:55 p.m. | Original

AMD this year not only delivered the very powerful Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" desktop processors and initial Radeon RX 6000 "Big Navi" graphics cards but for exciting Linux users was the timely open-source support for the new GPUs well in advance (and also already preparing for some 2021 graphics products) as well as more timely support around Zen 3 thermal support and other additions. AMD's open-source timing is still improving although not yet optimal but all in it

Fedora Workstation 33 Performing Very Well - Runs Past Clear Linux On Intel Tiger Lake Notebook

Phoronix | Dec. 29, 2020, 11:16 a.m. | Original

Following the recent AMD Zen 3 tests on Intel's Clear Linux a user expressed curiosity over the Intel-backed Linux distribution on Tiger Lake hardware given I hadn't done a multi-distribution comparison there yet. Using the Dell XPS 9310 as my lone Tiger Lake notebook I ran some benchmarks of Clear Linux, Ubuntu, Manjaro, and Fedora. For a change, Clear Linux wasn't the distant front-runner.

From the Dell XPS 13 9310 with Core i7

Proposed Patches Would Enable FP16 Pixel Format Support For Older AMD GPUs

Phoronix | Dec. 29, 2020, 9:52 a.m. | Original

Patches posted on Monday by independent open-source contributor Mario Kleiner would enable FP16 pixel format support for older generations of AMD Radeon GPUs.

These latest patches from Kleiner would enable FP16 pixel format support for DCE8 through DCE11 display hardware, or basically Kaveri / Hawaii through Polaris.

Kleiner notes in the new patches, " The [hardware] supports fp16, this is not only useful for HDR, but also for standard dynamic range displays, because it allows to get more precise color

Ubuntu Had A Stellar 2020 From Ubuntu 20.04 LTS To Continued WSL, Cloud Popularity

Phoronix | Dec. 29, 2020, 9:25 a.m. | Original

Ubuntu had a rather successful 2020 with the well received Ubuntu 20.04 LTS debut to continuing to make upstream improvements to GNOME, their adoption in the cloud and Windows Subsystem for Linux remaining strong, and all around Ubuntu being on steady footing across all areas of focus.

It will be interesting to see where Ubuntu pushes forward into 2021 ahead and what new innovations they may pursue ahead of the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS cycle. In particular, whether they re-enable

56 Patches Volleyed For Improving Intel Linux Graphics Driver Scheduling

Phoronix | Dec. 29, 2020, 8:08 a.m. | Original

Longtime Intel open-source graphics driver developer Chris Wilson sent out a set of 56 patches today working to improve their kernel graphics driver's scheduling performance.

Among the 56 patches out today include implementing support for fair low-latency scheduling based in part on BFS/MuQSS kernel scheduler concepts. There is also new infrastructure for ring scheduling and other work helping with latency reductions and support going back to Gen6 graphics .

There is also a new knob for allowing administrators/users to specify whether the CPU should be

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