Open-Source AMD, PHP 7.0 & Linux Performance Have Been Raising Eyebrows

Being half-way through the month, here's a look at the most interesting open-source/Linux news so far in September.

In the fifteen days so far this month there have been 144 original articles / news postings written on Phoronix by your's truly. The ten most viewed pieces of Linux/open-source/hardware news this month have included:

Analyzing & Optimizing The Performance Of Modern Linux Systems
If you've found yourself in need of fully analyzing the performance and power of modern Linux systems, there's a great new resource, assuming you have some time on your hands for some reading.

Linux 4.3 Scheduler Change "Potentially Affects Every SMP Workload In Existence"
Aside from Ingo Molnar's x86 boot changes he sent in to Linus Torvalds for the Linux 4.3 merge window, he also sent in the scheduler changes for this next version of the Linux kernel.

The Current State Of Debian GNU Hurd
DebConf 15 happened last month in Heidelberg where there was many interesting sessions, not just for Debian GNU/Linux but also Debian GNU/Hurd.

Features To Hopefully Look Forward To In GNOME 3.20
With GNOME 3.18 quickly approaching its release, our attention will soon turn towards GNOME 3.20 for release in March of next year.

AMD Creates Radeon Technologies Group To Focus On Graphics
For those that haven't heard yet, AMD has formed the Radeon Technologies Group for focusing on their graphics division.

Debian 8.2 Released, Debian 7.9 Too
The second point release to Debian 8 "Jessie" is now available.

AMD Squeezes In Few More AMDGPU Updates For Linux 4.3
Alex Deucher of AMD has sent in yet more AMDGPU DRM driver updates for targeting the Linux 4.3 kernel merge window.

Mesa 11.0 Officially Released With OpenGL 4.1 For RadeonSI/Nouveau
Mesa 11.0 has been officially released this morning! Mesa 11.0 is a huge, unbelievable upgrade for open-source graphics drivers.

Features, Changes Merged So Far For The Linux 4.3 Kernel
We're about half-way through the Linux 4.3 kernel merge window so here's a look at the features that have got me excited over the past week as new features and improved/changed functionality for this next major update to the Linux kernel.

The Significant DRM Graphics Pull Request Has Been Sent In For Linux 4.3
David Airlie has sent in the main pull request of the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver updates for the Linux 4.3 kernel merge window.

Meanwhile, the five most viewed reviews/multi-page articles so far were:

AMD Linux Graphics: The Latest Open-Source RadeonSI Driver Moves On To Smacking Catalyst
Following this weekend's Radeon R9 Fury open-source Linux driver tests with the DRM-Next code to be merged into Linux 4.3, the latest Mesa 11.1-devel Git code, and LLVM 3.8 SVN for the AMDGPU compiler back-end, I proceeded to run some bleeding-edge open-source Radeon Gallium3D graphics versus AMD Catalyst Linux benchmarks on Ubuntu.

PHP 7.0 Is Showing Very Promising Performance Over PHP 5, Closing Gap With HHVM
With PHP 7.0 RC2 having just been released, I've been testing it out thoroughly across a range of Linux systems at Phoronix. To the say the least, the performance claims made by PHP developers about the upcoming PHP7 release are very accurate: it's pretty darn fast and about twice as fast as PHP 5.6. Here are some benchmarks I did on Ubuntu Linux x86_64 comparing the performance of PHP 7.0 RC2 to PHP 5.3/5.4/5.5/5.6, along with some HHVM results tossed in at the end.

The Performance Gains Made By AMD's RadeonSI Open-Source Driver In Two Years
Earlier this week we took a look at the AMD Radeon R600 Gallium3D performance over two years by benchmarking every Ubuntu Linux release since early 2013 with a Radeon HD 6000 series graphics card. Today up for your viewing pleasure are the results from a similar test but using a Radeon Rx 200 series graphics card with the newer RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for open-source AMD GCN GPUs.

GCC vs. Clang Compiler Benchmarking On Intel's Skylake CPU
Continuing in our compiler benchmarks this week are some GCC vs. Clang C/C++ compiler performance benchmarks on Intel's new Skylake processor while testing from Ubuntu Linux 64-bit.

Trying Out The Open-Source NVIDIA/Nouveau Driver Rework In Linux 4.3
With the forthcoming Linux 4.3 kernel is a big rework to the open-source NVIDIA (Nouveau) driver. Here are our first tests of NVIDIA GeForce hardware under Linux 4.2 stable and then the Linux 4.3 Git code with this reworked driver.

As always, if you appreciate Phoronix as the leading source of Linux gaming/enthusiast news, hardware, and benchmarks, take a moment to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. If you wish to support the work even further, there's Phoronix Premium that does a lot to complement the ad revenues as the primary source to ensure I can keep writing all these articles and running all of the Linux performance tests day-in and day-out.

There's a lot more interesting stuff happening later in September so stay tuned!