Intel Linux Driver Patch Posted For Wildcat Lake NPU Accelerator Support

Last month Intel software engineers began posting Linux enablement patches for Wildcat Lake. Some of those first patches were merged for Linux 6.16 while more work is forthcoming. Posted yesterday for the first time on the Linux kernel mailing list was enabling the NPU accelerator support for Wildcat Lake...
phoronix.com/news/Intel-Wildca…

Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite GCC vs. LLVM Clang Compiler Performance

Since recently picking up a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptop for Linux testing now that the Linux support is starting to evolve into better shape (albeit still with many rough corners limiting the daily usability of such devices with Linux), one of the areas I was curious about was looking at the performance of Linux binaries with GCC vs. LLVM Clang. Here are some benc…
phoronix.com/review/snapdragon…

Box64 v0.3.6 Brings Better AVX Handling, Volatile Metadata For Windows Executables

Just a few days after the FEX 2506 release for that open-source emulator enabling x86_64 binaries to run on ARM64 (AArch64) hosts, Box64 is out with its newest feature update for this open-source project with similar goals...
phoronix.com/news/Box64-0.3.6-…

The Performance Gains Brought By Linux 6.15+ & Mesa 25.2 For AMD Strix Halo

While the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo SoCs have a nice out-of-the-box experience with modern Linux distributions for the Radeon 8050S and Radeon 8060S graphics, if going for the recently-released Linux 6.15 kernel there are some performance gains to enjoy as well as if opting for the latest Mesa 25.2 development code for the latest RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV …
phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.15-M…

AMD's Kernel Compute Driver "AMDKFD" Can Now Be Enabled On RISC-V

Following all of the Linux kernel graphics driver features merged last week for the Linux 6.16 kernel, sent out this morning were the initial batch of fixes to the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) code. Besides fixes to these graphics / display / accelerator drivers, there is one new feature: the AMDKFD kernel compute driver can now be enabled on RISC-V systems...
phoronix.com/news/AMDKFD-RISC-…

Apple M2 Pro / Max / Ultra PCIe Support Upstreamed In Linux 6.16

The many PCI subsystem changes have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.16 merge window...
phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-P…

Linux 6.16 NFS Client Exposes LOCALIO State Via sysfs

In addition to the NFS server changes for Linux 6.16 with now supporting larger I/O block sizes, the Network File-System (NFS) client changes were merged this week for this next kernel version...
phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.16-N…

More KVM Changes Merged For Linux 6.16: AMD "ALLOWED_SEV_FEATURES" Merged

Following the Intel TDX host support for KVM being merged for the Linux 6.16 merge window, another batch of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes were merged for the ongoing Linux 6.16 merge window...
phoronix.com/news/More-KVM-For…

Mesa's Rusticl Lands OpenCL FP16 Half-Float Support

Mesa's modern Rust-written OpenCL driver for Gallium3D "Rusticl" has closed one of the few remaining gaps with the former Clover OpenCL state tracker. Merged today for Mesa 25.2 is native FP16 support...
phoronix.com/news/Rusticl-Mesa…

Linux 6.15 & Early Linux 6.16 Delivering Some Additional Gains For AMD Strix Halo

As some extra benchmarks to put out today for the Phoronix.com 21st birthday, there is some additional data points to share on AMD Strix Halo when using Linux 6.15 stable and the early development state of Linux 6.16 Git ahead of its v6.16-rc1 tagging this weekend. The Linux kernel performance is moving in the right direction at least with this round of…
phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.15-6…

Proposed Persistent Cache For Block Devices "PCACHE" Ported To DM Framework

An initial patch series sent back out in April proposed PCACHE as a persistent memory cache for block devices. PCACHE was born out of the CXL block device driver and brings some benefits over the likes of BCache and dm-writecache...
phoronix.com/news/Linux-PCACHE…

FreeBSD Developers Deciding What To Do For WiFi With FreeBSD 15: Stable Or Unstable

FreeBSD developers have been working a lot on their wireless/WiFi driver support in recent months as part of their broader initiative for improving their operating system support for laptops. While a lot of progress has been made on seeing more modern WiFi support and recent WiFi chipsets being enabled, it's still not complete and that puts FreeBSD 15 in a tou…
phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-15-W…

AMD Radeon 8050S "Strix Halo" Linux Graphics Performance

Last month I began the much anticipated AMD Strix Halo Linux benchmarking at Phoronix by testing the top-end Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 that features 16 cores / 32 threads and the very impressive Radeon 8060S integrated graphics. Coming in one step below that flagship Strix Halo SoC is the Ryzen AI Max (PRO) 390 with Radeon 8050S graphics. Coming out today on Phoronix - coincidentally …
phoronix.com/review/amd-radeon…

AMD Ryzen AI Max 390 Performance - 12-Core Strix Halo

For some very fun Linux benchmarking on this 21st anniversary of starting Phoronix is looking at the Ryzen AI Max (PRO) 390 Linux performance, the 12-core Strix Halo SoC with Radeon 8050S Graphics. While there have been various benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ (PRO) 395 in recent weeks on Phoronix and other publications, the other Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" SoCs haven't been as widely s…
phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen-…

Bcachefs Lands More Improvements For Linux 6.16 After Data Loss Bug Hit v6.15

Last week many Bcachefs performance optimizations, recovery work, and enhanced error messages were merged at the start of the Linux 6.16 merge window. Now ahead of the Linux 6.16-rc1 release coming on Sunday to cap off the merge window, a second round of Bcachefs enhancements and fixes were merged...
phoronix.com/news/Bcachefs-Mor…

Marking 21 Years Of Covering Linux Hardware

Phoronix has made it another year. Today marks 21 years since I started Phoronix.com with a focus on providing Linux hardware reviews. Linux hardware support is a night and day difference then to today as is the overall ecosystem with all the major hardware vendors these days having some -- often significant -- levels of interest in Linux support. No longer is it typically a worry of whether your mouse,…
phoronix.com/news/Phoronix-Tur…