Checkpoint/Restore Of Unprivileged Processes Sent In For Linux 5.9
Linux 5.9 is bringing another feature that's long been baking and of interest to a growing number of stakeholders... checkpoint/restore functionality of unprivileged processes...
Defaulting Radeon GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs To Better Linux Driver Is Held Up By Analog Outputs
Switching from the "Radeon" to "AMDGPU" kernel driver on Linux is possible for Radeon GCN 1.0/1.1 era graphics cards and doing so can mean slight performance benefits, the ability to run the AMDVLK or RADV Vulkan drivers, and simply making use of this better maintained driver. But having these original GCN graphics cards default to the modern AMDGPU driver appears held up by the lack of analog video output support with that driver...
After 5 Years, FSGSBASE Support Finally Ready For Linux To Enhance AMD/Intel Performance
The Linux kernel work for making use of the x86_64 FSGSBASE instruction since Intel Ivy Bridge and since then AMD CPUs also is set to finally land with the in-development Linux 5.9 kernel. The FSGSBASE support has the possibility of helping Intel/AMD CPU performance especially in areas like context switching that had been hurt badly by Spectre/Meltdown and other CPU vulnerability mitigations largely on the Intel side...
Linux 5.9 Set To Bring "Close_Range" System Call - Coordinated With FreeBSD Developers
The close_range() system call is intended to allow efficiently closing a range of file descriptors (or all file descriptors) of the calling task. This system call was devised in cooperation with FreeBSD developers...
GNOME's Mutter Adds Support For Launching "Trusted Clients" On Wayland
Merged to GNOME's Mutter compositor is an API for Wayland to allow the launching of trusted clients...
Linux 5.9 Adds Intel "Keem Bay" Support, 8 Snapdragon Smartphones, AMD EthanolX BMC, Old Tegra Tablets
There are many ARM changes coming to Linux 5.9, including support for Intel's Keem Bay...
Intel's Open-Source H.265/HEVC Encoder Sees First Release Of 2020
Intel's Scalable Video Technology team is known for their open-source video encoder work particularly on AV1 and VP9 formats, but they also continue to maintain a high performance H.265/HEVC encoder as well. Intel SVT-HEVC 1.5 was released on Monday as their first major update of the year...
Intel SERIALIZE, Dropping Of SGI UV Supercomputer, i386 Clang'ing Hit Linux 5.9
A number of x86-related changes were sent out today for the first full day of the Linux 5.9 merge window...
AMD HSA Offloading Support Dropped From The GCC Compiler
There didn't appear to be much usage ever out of the AMD HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) support within the GCC compiler and hadn't been maintained in a while so now has been wiped out of the GNU Compiler Collection...
Btrfs Seeing Some Nice Performance Improvements For Linux 5.9
With more eyes on Btrfs given the file-system is set to become the default for Fedora 33 desktop spins, there are some interesting performance optimizations coming to Btrfs with the in-development Linux 5.9 kernel...