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LLVM Lands Some Long Overdue Tuning Optimizations For AMD Zen 4

Merged today to the LLVM/Clang compiler codebase are some long overdue adjustments to the AMD Zen 4 "znver4" CPU model for more accurately assessing various latency timings and micro-ops. These values were initially copied over from the Zen 3 (znver3) target but never adjusted properly for Zen 4 until now when an independent contributor took to sorting it out...
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Linux 6.18 Adding AWCC Profile Support For The Dell G15 5530

For those that happen to have the Dell G15 5530 laptop or considering this Intel Core i7 13650HX + NVIDIA GeForce RTX high-end laptop, the upcoming Linux 6.18 kernel is set to have AWCC platform profile support for this model as a nice enhancement. In turn this patch should also be back-ported to future stable Linux kernel point releases...
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Intel Xe3P_LPD Display Support For Linux Being Built Out Ahead Of Nova Lake

Earlier this month Intel Linux software engineers began posting patches for enabling Xe3P kernel graphics driver support with initial usage by Nova Lake processors and later the expected Celestial discrete GPUs. That initial Xe3P iGPU support is going into Linux 6.19 but expect more feature additions and optimizations in follow-on kernel cycles in 2026. Similarly the patches have now begun coming out for enabling the display engine capabilities for "Xe3P_LPD" for actually being able to drive displays (monitors) with Xe3P on Nova Lake...
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Linux 6.19 To Enable Networking For The EIC7700 SoC Powering The SiFive Premier P550

Upstreamed for the current Linux 6.18 cycle was finally having mainline support for the ESWIN EIC770 SoC with its four SiFive P550 cores plus having the DeviceTree support for the SiFive HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V development board using that SoC. Sadly not making it though for Linux 6.18 was the Ethernet controller support for the EIC7700 SoC but that is now destined to arrive in Linux 6.19...
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AlmaLinux 10.1 Will Support The Btrfs File-System

It's been nearly a decade since Red Hat notably deprecated Btrfs back in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 after it being a tech preview in earlier versions of RHEL. While upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 remains on XFS and supporting the likes of Stratis Storage with LVM, AlmaLinux today announced that their AlmaLinux 10.1 release will support Btrfs...
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Intel Nova Lake To Feature 6th Gen NPU

Following the recent Xe3P graphics enablement for Nova Lake as well as Nova Lake compiler target enablement and other early hardware enablement for Intel's Nova Lake processors, today has brought initial enablement for Nova Lake's NPU...
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Revisiting The SNC3 vs. HEX Mode Performance With Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids

Last year following the launch of the Intel Xeon 6900P Granite Rapids processors I ran some benchmarks looking at the SNC3 vs. HEX clustering mode performance. With having an Intel Xeon 6980P server back up and running on a Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL server after my AvenueCity reference server failed nearly one year ago, I revisited the SNC3 vs. HEX clustering performance for those curious how it's looking on a modern software stack and with new/updated benchmarks.
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More Kernel Graphics Driver & Accelerator/NPU Driver Updates Ready For Linux 6.19

Following the initial set of drm-misc-next updates for Linux 6.19, another round of drm-misc-next updates were sent out today in queuing ahead of that next kernel cycle. There are a number of updates to the smaller DRM graphics/display drivers as well as growing activity around the accelerator "accel" open-source drivers for different NPUs / AI accelerators...
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Blender 5.1 Aiming For Vulkan By Default, More Improvements Coming

While the Blender 5.0 3D modeling software is being released next month, there is already exciting changes to look forward to with Blender 5.1 in the new year. Beyond AMD HIP-RT ray-tracing by default in Blender 5.1, this follow-on Blender release is also planning on enabling Vulkan API support by default...
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AMD ROCm 7.9 Running In Early Tests On Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo"

The most unexpected surprise today was AMD releasing ROCm 7.9 as a new technology preview / development branch for the open-source ROCm GPU compute stack just one month after formally releasing ROCm 7.0. While not a fan of how they handled the version discontinuity, ROCm 7.9 has been working out well in my very initial tests on AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo"...
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Tellusim Core SDK Opens Up For Use By OSI-Approved Open-Source Projects

Over the weekend we wrote about the visually-impressive Tellusim Core SDK being posted to GitHub as a C++ SDK for high-end graphics and compute. The downside was that the Tellusim Core SKD was rather restrictive in only being free for education, free for companies with less than $200k USD in annual revenue, and evaluation purposes. Or you needed to obtain a negotiated license for the software. As a pleasant surprise, OSI-approved open-source projects not backed by for-profit organizations can now openly use this superb graphics SDK...
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