With Linux 7.2 expected for its stable release this weekend, today's testing has some additional testing of the Linux 7.2 Git kernel as well as Linux 7.1 stable compared to Linux 7.0 as used by default on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Phoronix testing previously conducted of Linux 7.2 have shown benefits for Intel Arc B390 Xe3 in some configurations, faster poll performance on AMD Ryzen Threadripper and other hardware, and some nice I/O performance gains on AMD EPYC Turin . Today's kernel benchmarks are with the Intel Xeon 678X Granite Rapids WS currently in the lab as part of the HP Z4 G6i workstation testing.

The HP Z4 G6i workstation that I've been testing the past few weeks and will have in the lab for the month features the Intel Xeon 678X 48-core / 96-thread Granite Rapids WS processor, 4 x 32GB DDR5-6400 memory, 2TB SK Hynix NVMe SSD, and NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell graphics.

This HP GNR-WS workstation was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS while comparing Linux 7.0, Linux 7.1, and Linux 7.2 Git. The Ubuntu Kernel Mainline PPA was used for the kernel images for easy reproducibility and transparency into the Kconfig, etc. All software/hardware was kept the same for testing besides swapping out the kernel version being tested.

Let's see how Intel Xeon Granite Rapids WS is looking with Linux 7.1/7.2.