Phoronix
Independent Linux hardware news, graphics/compute drivers, benchmarks, and kernel developments.
Intel Formally Announces Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake"
Intel officially launched its Core Series 3 “Wildcat Lake” low‑end mobile processors, the first 18A chips positioned below the Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” SoCs. The lineup targets value‑oriented laptops, commercial devices and edge hardware, promising 47% higher single‑thread, up to 41% better multi‑thread performance, and 2.8× GPU AI gains versus the five‑year‑old Tiger Lake platform. The flagship Core 7 360 offers six cores, two Xe graphics cores and a 15 W base/35 W turbo power envelope, while the entry Core 3 304 provides five cores and a single Xe core. Intel also highlighted Linux kernel support for Wildcat Lake, aiming for broad OS compatibility.
AMD EDAC Driver In Linux 7.1 Adds Support For Zen 3 Rembrandt Hardware With ECC
The Linux 7.1 kernel now includes updated EDAC (Error Detection And Correction) drivers, adding support for AMD’s Zen 3 Rembrandt APUs (Family 19h Model 40h‑4fh) and enabling ECC memory error reporting. A concise three‑line patch expands the amd64_edac driver to cover these mobile processors, confirming...
Linus Torvalds Merged The Code Beginning To Remove Intel 486 CPU Support In Linux 7.1
Linus Torvalds merged a patch that begins removing i486 CPU support in the upcoming Linux 7.1 release. The change deletes the Kconfig options for M486, M486SX and ELAN, making it impossible to build a kernel with i486 support from 7.1 onward....
Jemalloc 5.3.1 Released With Many Improvements After Nearly Four Year Hiatus
Jemalloc 5.3.1 was released, marking the first update in nearly four years since 5.3.0. The patch bundles roughly 400 commits that improve portability, add new compile‑time and run‑time features, and deliver a suite of performance optimizations. Highlights include pvalloc support,...
GreenBoost Memory Orchestrator For NVIDIA GPUs Introduces GreenBoost-Proton For Gaming
GreenBoost, an open‑source memory‑tiering solution for NVIDIA GPUs, now offers GreenBoost‑Proton, a Vulkan‑based layer that expands reported VRAM for Linux gaming. After legal pressure forced the original “nvidia_greenboost” repository offline, the developer relaunched the code on GitLab without NVIDIA branding....
Coreboot Comes To AMD Ryzen Powered Star Labs StarBook MK VI After 3+ Year Wait
Star Labs has finally released a Coreboot firmware image for its AMD Ryzen 5000‑based StarBook MK VI laptop, ending a three‑year wait that began when early buyers received an AMI BIOS instead of the promised open‑source option. The firmware was upstreamed to...
The Good & The Bad When Using LLMs To Write Spack Packages
Large language models are now being used to draft Spack packages for high‑performance computing, as demonstrated by Lawrence Livermore’s Caetano Melone at the HPSF conference. The experiment showed that with well‑structured prompts and representative examples, LLMs can produce functional package...
NVIDIA Hiring More LLVM Engineers To Work On CUDA Tile
NVIDIA announced it is hiring additional LLVM compiler engineers to advance its CUDA Tile programming model. CUDA Tile, unveiled last year, provides a virtual ISA for tile‑based parallelism and ships an open‑sourced intermediate representation built on LLVM's MLIR. The new...
Rust For Linux 7.1 Bringing Experimental Option That Can Help Performance
Linux kernel 7.1 raises its Rust baseline to version 1.85 and updates Bindgen to 0.71.1, aligning with Debian Trixie’s toolchain. A new experimental Kconfig flag, CONFIG_RUST_INLINE_HELPERS, lets the compiler inline C helper functions into Rust code, delivering roughly a 2%...
Mold 2.41 Linker Released With New Features & Fixes
Mold 2.41, the high‑performance linker positioned as a GNU/LLVM alternative, has been released after a six‑month hiatus. The update introduces a configurable _MOLD_TARGETS_ CMake option, an improved --gdb-index speed, and a new --zero-to-bss flag that automatically converts all‑zero sections to...
Linux Out-Of-Bounds Access Fixed For Unprivileged Users With Specially Crafted Certs
A three‑year‑old out‑of‑bounds read in the Linux kernel’s X.509 certificate parser could be triggered by an unprivileged user submitting a specially crafted certificate via the keyrings API. The flaw, present since the 6.4 release in 2023, risked kernel crashes, denial‑of‑service...
CMake Pursuing Tighter Integration With Package Managers, Other Improvements
CMake released version 4.3, adding import/export support via the JSON‑based Common Package Specification (CPS) and an experimental Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generator. The CPS aims to streamline interoperability between CMake projects and external package managers, while integrated linting is also...
Linux 7.0 Sees Last Minute Fix For Bogus Hardware Errors On AMD Zen 3
The Linux 7.0 stable kernel is slated for release later today, accompanied by a last‑minute pull request that targets false hardware errors on AMD Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000) CPUs. The patch adds a CPU‑ID check to filter out bogus Machine Check Exception...
D7VK 1.7 Brings More Improvements For Legacy Direct3D On Vulkan
The open‑source D7VK project released version 1.7, extending its support for legacy Direct3D 3, 5, 6, and 7 APIs on Vulkan. The update refines vertex transformation, clipping, and lighting handling, and adds workarounds that enable more classic Windows games to...
RISC-V BeagleV Ahead Single Board Computer To See Working HDMI With Linux 7.1
The BeagleV Ahead, an open‑source RISC‑V single‑board computer built around the quad‑core TH1520 SoC, now supports HDMI output in the Linux 7.1 mainline kernel. The kernel’s Device Tree updates add the HDMI connector node and activate the DPU, enabling video‑out for...
Microsoft Upgrades Its WSL2 Kernel Against Linux 6.18 LTS
Microsoft has released the linux‑msft‑wsl‑6.18.20.1 update, rebasing WSL2 on the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel. The previous 6.6 LTS base, now two cycles old, is replaced, allowing upstream security patches and performance gains. New kernel configuration adds native F2FS and ExFAT filesystem...
Support For AMD GFX11.7 "RDNA 4m" Pending For RADV & RadeonSI Drivers
AMD’s upcoming RDNA 4m graphics IP, labeled GFX 11.7 (GFX1170), has moved from LLVM shader compiler patches to open‑source driver support. Six Mesa patches—adding roughly 3,000 lines of code—are under review to enable the RADV Vulkan and RadeonSI OpenGL drivers. The changes...
Bitland WMI Laptop Driver Slated For Linux 7.1
Bitland, the Chinese OEM once on the U.S. Entity List, will see its MIFS WMI driver merged into the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel. The open‑source driver, built by reverse‑engineering the Windows Management Instrumentation interface, adds platform‑profile switching, sensor monitoring, keyboard backlight...
Framework Computer To Announce Their Next-Gen Hardware Later This Month
Linux‑friendly vendor Framework Computer announced that it will reveal its 2026 generation of modular hardware at a San Francisco event on April 21 at 10:30 AM PT. The company has not disclosed specifications, but speculation points to AMD Ryzen AI 400, Intel Panther Lake,...
TUXEDO Laptops Will Enjoy More Features With The Upstream Linux 7.1 Kernel
TUXEDO Computers’ laptops are gaining additional functionality as the Uniwill x86 platform driver, first merged into the Linux 6.19 kernel, continues to evolve in the upcoming Linux 7.1 release. The driver now exposes a USB‑C power‑priority setting via sysfs, lets...
ASUS Armoury Driver Supports A Few More Laptops With Linux 7.0
The Linux 7.0 kernel, slated for release this Sunday, now incorporates the updated ASUS Armoury driver. The driver adds support for three recent ASUS models—the TUF Gaming A16 2024, ROG Zephyrus G16 2024, and ROG Flow X13 2023—expanding Linux’s compatibility with high‑performance gaming...
SiFive Raises $400M To Double Down On High Performance RISC-V For Data Centers
SiFive announced a $400 million Series G financing round to accelerate its high‑performance RISC‑V offerings for data‑center workloads. The round was oversubscribed, with lead investors including NVIDIA and Apollo Global Management. Proceeds will fund new CPU core designs, accelerators, and system IP,...
RISC-V Optimized Strnlen Implementation For Linux 7.1 Yields Big Speed-Up
A hand‑optimized RISC‑V implementation of the kernel’s strnlen() function is slated for Linux 7.1. Developed by Feng Jiang of KylinOS, the assembly version includes a generic path and a Zbb‑enabled variant, delivering up to a 427.5% speed increase in benchmarks. The...
Valve Developer Improves The Linux Gaming Experience For Limited vRAM Hardware
Valve’s Linux graphics driver team, led by Natalie Vock, released kernel and KDE patches that dramatically improve gaming on PCs with limited video memory, such as 8 GB VRAM cards. The updates add DRM device‑memory cgroup support and new TTM allocation...
AMD Making It Easier To Embed Lemonade AI Capabilities Into Other Apps
AMD’s Lemonade open‑source AI server has released version 10.2, focusing on embeddable binaries for Linux and Windows. The new artifacts contain only the Lemond daemon, CLI and essential resources, removing web UI and Electron components. Lemonade 10.2 continues to support...
Linux 7.0 Adds Support For New Keys On Upcoming Laptops For Expanded AI Agent Interactions
The Linux 7.0 kernel now supports three newly standardized HID keycodes designed for richer AI‑agent interactions on upcoming laptops. These keys—action on selection, contextual insertion, and contextual query—extend the existing Microsoft Copilot key that already triggers AI assistants. The update, merged...
Intel Releases OpenVINO 2026.1 With Backend For Llama.cpp, New Hardware Support
Intel unveiled OpenVINO 2026.1, its latest quarterly update that expands generative AI capabilities across Intel’s hardware portfolio. The release adds official support for Wildcat Lake SoCs and the new Intel Arc Pro B70 32 GB GPU, while introducing Qwen3 VL on both CPU and...
Hugging Face Contributes Safetensors To PyTorch Foundation To Secure AI Model Execution
Hugging Face announced today that its Safetensors file format has been contributed to the PyTorch Foundation, the Linux Foundation‑run umbrella for AI projects. Safetensors is designed to store and load model weights without the arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities inherent in...
XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.20.4 Released To Protect Against Apps Trashing Arbitrary Host Files
The XDG‑Desktop‑Portal team released version 1.20.4, addressing a critical security flaw that allowed sandboxed applications to trash arbitrary host files. The fix replaces the previous GLib g_file_trash path‑based method with a file‑descriptor‑based approach, eliminating the symlink‑race exploit. This update arrives alongside...
Flatpak 1.16.4 Brings Important Security Fixes For Sandbox Escape & Deleting Host Files
Flatpak 1.16.4 was released with a series of critical security patches targeting sandbox escape and host‑file manipulation vulnerabilities. The update resolves CVE‑2026‑34078, which allowed apps to break out of the sandbox via malicious symlinks, and CVE‑2026‑34079, which could delete arbitrary...
Jay: A New Open-Source Shader Compiler Being Developed For Intel GPUs
Intel is introducing Jay, a new open‑source SSA‑based shader compiler for its Linux OpenGL and Vulkan drivers, initially targeting Xe2 GPUs. Led by Alyssa Rosenzweig, the project aims to replace the legacy BRW compiler and complement the Intel Graphics Compiler...
AMD InterWave ISA Sound Card Driver Seeing New Linux Patches In 2026
The Linux kernel now includes a three‑patch series that adds suspend and resume functionality to the decades‑old AMD InterWave ISA sound card driver. The patches, authored by open‑source contributor Cássio Gabriel, restructure a symbol export, introduce a TEA6330T mixer helper,...
Ubuntu 26.04 Provides More Performance For AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo"
Ubuntu 26.04 brings significant performance gains to AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo” APUs compared with the prior Ubuntu 25.04 release. The new distribution runs the Linux 7.0 kernel and GCC 15.2, delivering double‑digit CPU speedups and noticeable Radeon 8060S GPU improvements on the same Framework...
Intel QAT Driver With Linux 7.1 Adding Zstd Offload Support
Intel’s QuickAssist (QAT) driver for the Linux 7.1 kernel now supports Zstandard (Zstd) offloading across Gen 4, Gen 5, and Gen 6 accelerators. Gen 4/5 offload compression only for buffers 8 KB‑512 KB, while Gen 6 offloads both compression and decompression with no size ceiling but falls...
Linux's Second-In-Command Turns To New Fuzzing Tools For Uncovering Kernel Bugs
Linux stable kernel maintainer Greg Kroah‑Hartman has introduced a new fuzzing suite called gregkh_clanker_t1000 to hunt for kernel defects. The tool was first exercised on the ksmbd/SMB code and quickly expanded to patches affecting USB, HID, F2FS, LoongArch, Wi‑Fi, LEDs and...
A Small But Useful Debugging Addition For AMD Zen Systems With Linux 7.1
Linux 7.1 adds automatic reporting of AMD's AGESA firmware version to the kernel log, eliminating the need to reboot into BIOS or parse vendor notes. The change is delivered via a patch in the tip/x86/platform branch and will be merged...
Linux 7.1 Expected To Begin Removing I486 CPU Support
A patch targeting the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window will begin stripping Intel 486 (i486) CPU support from the kernel. The change removes the CONFIG_M486SX, CONFIG_M486 and CONFIG_MELAN Kconfig options, preventing new i486 kernel builds. Linus Torvalds and maintainer Ingo Molnar argue the...
Linux 7.0-rc7 Adding More Documentation For AI Tools To Send Better Security Bug Reports
A pull request for Linux 7.0‑rc7 adds extensive documentation to the security‑bugs.rst file, aiming to help AI tools and human contributors submit higher‑quality security bug reports. Greg Kroah‑Hartman highlighted that the surge in AI‑generated findings has overwhelmed the kernel security team,...
Hid-Omg-Detect: Linux Driver In Development To Detect Malicious HID Devices
Zubeyr Almaho is spearheading a new Linux kernel driver called hid‑omg‑detect, designed to passively monitor and flag potentially malicious HID peripherals such as compromised keyboards and mice. The driver evaluates low‑level signals like keystroke‑timing entropy, immediate post‑enumeration typing, and suspicious...
Linux Sees Fixes For Its GD-ROM Driver In 2026 For Sega Dreamcast
The Linux kernel received a new patch series that resolves long‑standing bugs in the GD‑ROM driver used for Sega Dreamcast optical media. The fixes correct faulty MMIO register access and update the block layer’s capacity reporting, eliminating kernel oopses that...
Mesa 26.1 Makes It Easier To "Fake" A GPU Reset Using LLVMpipe
Mesa 26.1 introduces a new feature for the LLVMpipe software driver that lets developers simulate a GPU reset. By setting the LP_CONTEXT_RESET_FILE environment variable and writing to the specified file, LLVMpipe triggers an emulated reset. The change, contributed by Wayland...
Debian Is Figuring Out How Age Verification Laws Will Impact It
Debian is evaluating how emerging age‑verification statutes, such as California’s Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) slated for 2027 and a similar law already in force in Brazil, could affect its operating system and package management. Project Leader Andreas Tille noted...
Razer Wolverine V3 Pro & Betop KP50 Controllers To Be Supported By Linux 7.0
The upcoming Linux 7.0‑rc7 kernel adds native support for the Razer Wolverine V3 Pro and Betop KP50B/C gaming controllers via the XPad driver, covering both wired and 2.4 GHz wireless modes. The Wolverine V3 Pro, a high‑end controller priced around $199, uses...
Linux 7.1 To Expose AMD Zen 6's AVX-512 BMM For Guest VMs
The Linux 7.1 kernel will include a patch that exposes AMD Zen 6’s new AVX‑512 Bit Matrix Multiply (BMM) instructions to KVM virtual machines. Zen 6’s ISA adds BMM and bit‑reversal operations, confirmed by recent Binutils, GCC and LLVM updates. The KVM patch...
3mdeb Makes Progress Bringing AMD openSIL + Coreboot To Ryzen AM5 Motherboard
3mdeb is advancing its open‑source firmware effort by porting AMD openSIL and Coreboot to the MSI PRO B850‑P, a mainstream Ryzen AM5 desktop motherboard. The company’s latest blog shows progress on critical components such as MPIO, SMU, NBIO and graphics,...
OpenRazer 3.12.1 Enables Two More Razer Devices Under Linux
OpenRazer 3.12.1 was released today, extending Linux support to two additional Razer products. The update adds full functionality for the Razer Basilisk Mobile mouse in both wired and wireless modes. It also introduces drivers for the Lian Li O11 Dynamic –...
Wine 11.6 Begins Reviving Its Android Driver
Wine 11.6, the latest bi‑weekly development release, reintroduces work on an Android driver after a prolonged lull. The update modernizes the build system with Gradle compatibility and adapts to newer Android versions. It also refines DLL loader order heuristics to...
Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.32 Adds Wildcat Lake Support
Intel has launched Linux NPU Driver 1.32, adding official support for the upcoming Wildcat Lake platform in Core Ultra processors. The new driver mirrors the earlier IVPU kernel driver update, delivering user‑space components that interface with the accelerator hardware. It also drops the...
AMDGPU Driver Ready To Be The Default For Aging Kaveri / Kabini / Mullins APUs
The Linux 6.19 kernel now defaults AMDGPU for all GCN 1.1 GPUs, replacing the legacy Radeon driver. A new patch extends this default to the decade‑old Kaveri, Kabini, and Mullins APUs, bringing them to feature parity with newer hardware. The switch...
Snapdragon X2's Adreno X2-85 GPU Sees Driver Improvements For Linux 7.1
Rob Clark submitted a batch of MSM DRM driver changes for the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window, targeting Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 laptop SoC. The updates bring preemption support, SKU detection with speed‑bin tables, and error fixes to the Adreno X2‑85 GPU, while the...