More kernel architecture features continue to be supported by the RISC-V code with Linux 5.9 .

Each kernel cycle we have been seeing more RISC-V code get squared away and over the past year has begun running nicely on the likes of SiFive's HiFive Unleashed . With the Linux 5.9 merge window on the RISC-V side there are a number of new features now supported:

- Atomic read modify write is advertised for allowing OSQ locks to be enabled.

- Support for NO_HZ_

The latest open-source code snapshot of AMD's official Vulkan driver is now available.

AMDVLK 2020.Q3.3 is the latest tagged release for their open-source Vulkan Linux driver that is an alternative to Mesa's RADV driver. With AMDVLK 2020.Q3.3 they finally have their pipeline cache in good order that it's (re)enabled, which is helpful for performance. AMDVLK 2020.Q3.3 also enables sharing

Security researchers from Graz University of Technology and CISPA Helmholtz are out with their latest findings on CPU speculative execution vulnerabilities, namely taking another look at L1TF/Foreshadow. Their findings are bad news not only for Intel but potentially other CPU vendors as well.

Their interesting research most recently has been looking at the prefetching effect observed in previous micro-architectural attacks only to find that the attribution to the CPU prefetching mechanism is incorrect. Instead the issue turns out to be speculative dereferencing of user-space registers in the kernel

The USB and Thunderbolt subsystem changes have already been merged into the in-development Linux 5.9 kernel.

Since preliminary USB4 support was added to Linux 5.6, which is largely based on Intel's existing Thunderbolt code, succeeding kernels have worked towards getting that USB4 code squared away. With Linux 5.9 that work has continued.

On the USB4 front for Linux 5.9 is improving the config symbol help text, adding USB4 support to the Intel PMC MUX driver, USB4

Earlier this year at GTC Digital was the announcement of the NVIDIA High Performance Computing Software Development Kit while this week they have finally released this HPC SDK for developers at large.

The NVIDIA HPC SDK aims to make it easy to deploy HPC workloads not only on NVIDIA GPUs but also CPUs. The HPC SDK features LLVM-based C++ and Fortran compilers, including support for automatic GPU acceleration of C++17 code using parallel algorithms and Fortran intrinsics.

The NVIDIA HPC SDK also supports OpenMP and OpenACC, NVIDIA

Feature work on Mesa 20.2 is now over with the code having been branched today and Mesa 20.2-RC1 subsequently issued.

There will now be weekly release candidates until this quarter's release is ready, which is likely to happen at some point in September depending upon how many blocker bugs are discovered and in turn how long it takes to get those issues resolved. Ideally the Mesa 20.2.0 release will happen in early September.

Among the many changes for this quarter

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver updates were sent in today for the Linux 5.9 kernel merge window. There are some big additions particularly with AMD Sienna Cichlid and Navy Flounder landing as Navi 2 parts but also a lot of other changes in tow.

There is a fair amount of new hardware enablement on the graphics/display side with Linux 5.9:

- Initial support for Navi 2 Sienna Cichlid and Navy Flounder Radeon GPUs. These Navi 2 parts are expected to be announced later this year while the

For those that prefer waiting until the first point release of a new Ubuntu Long Term Support series before upgrading, Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS is out with the latest bug and security fixes for the "Focal Fossa" release.

The slightly delayed Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS is now shipping with various bug/security fixes. Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS doesn't bring any major kernel upgrade or hardware enablement stack for that matter but won't come until Ubuntu

Fedora's less talked about "Internet of Things" (IoT) edition is looking to be promoted to an official spin for Fedora 33.

Red Hat's Peter Robinson is pushing along Fedora IoT through Fedora's new Edition Promotion Process in aiming to make it an official Fedora Edition alongside Fedora Workstation and Fedora Server. The hope in this IoT flavor becoming "official" is that it will help in the adoption. The IoT version also relies upon OSTree and the hope is that additional exposure will be of