Hardware News Archives


2,112 Hardware open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Habana Labs Goya AI Processor Support Queued For Linux 5.1
Habana Labs Goya AI Processor Support Queued For Linux 5.1

Published back in January were initial open-source kernel driver patches for Habana Labs' Goya processor intended for accelerating deep learning workloads. This new Habana Labs kernel driver will debut with the mainline Linux 5.1 kernel.

23 February 2019 - Goya AI Accelerator - 4 Comments
Librem 5 Smartphone Specs Firmed Up, But Now Delayed To Q3
Librem 5 Smartphone Specs Firmed Up, But Now Delayed To Q3

The Librem 5 Linux-powered smartphone originally planned to ship in January 2019 but last year was delayed to April to allow for more time to finish up work on the hardware and software. Today Purism is announcing that the Librem 5 is being delayed to "Q3" but they have been making progress particularly on the hardware side.

21 February 2019 - Q3 Target - 40 Comments
TuxClocker: Another GPU Overclocking GUI For Linux
TuxClocker: Another GPU Overclocking GUI For Linux

Adding to the list of third-party GPU overclocking utilities for Linux is TuxClocker, a Qt5-based user-interface currently with support for NVIDIA graphics cards and experimental support for AMD GPUs.

20 February 2019 - TuxClocker Qt5 Overclocking GUI - 5 Comments
PulseAudio Plugin Allows For Better Bluetooth Audio Quality On Linux

Right now on most Linux distributions when using higher-end Bluetooth headphones, the low-end SBC audio codec ends up being utilized by default which is subpar for the potential audio quality of the more expensive headphones. Fortunately, there are PulseAudio modules that allow for the higher-end codecs to be used.

11 February 2019 - Better Linux Bluetooth Audio - 54 Comments
Qualcomm Vibrator Driver Queued For Linux 5.1

The mainline Linux kernel support continues to improve for various ARM SoCs and different Android smartphone features. The latest driver on its way to the mainline Linux kernel is an adaptation of Android's Qualcomm MSM vibrator.

7 February 2019 - Qualcomm MSM - 13 Comments
New System76 Darter Pro Now Shipping At $999+

Last week System76 announced the new Darter Pro laptop with Intel 8th Gen CPUs while today the ordering process has opened up on this latest 15-inch laptop from the Linux-focused vendor. They hadn't revealed pricing information last week but we now know that information.

5 February 2019 - System76 Darter Pro - 13 Comments
Initial Hands-On & Benchmarking With The Dell XPS 9380 Pre-Loaded With Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Initial Hands-On & Benchmarking With The Dell XPS 9380 Pre-Loaded With Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Dell recently announced the XPS 9380 Developer Edition laptop as a minor refinement over the 9370: there's now Intel Whiskey Lake processors with minor performance boosts and the web camera is better positioned, while for the "Developer Edition" Sputnik models it means Ubuntu 18.04 LTS rather than Ubuntu 16.04 on the former model or Microsoft Windows 10. The testing so far of the Dell XPS 9380 Developer Edition has been going well and I will have my full benchmark review out soon, but for this weekend are some preliminary data points.

2 February 2019 - Dell XPS 9380 + Ubuntu 18.04 - 19 Comments
Purism Plans To Expand & Offer Ethical Subscription Services

If the folks at Purism weren't busy enough working on their Librem 5 Linux smartphone initiative and adjoining projects like creating a new software app store, they also are eyeing an entrance into offering "ethical" subscription services and ultimately expand into other areas.

31 January 2019 - Purism Services - 22 Comments
New System76 Darter Pro Coming Soon With Intel 8th Gen CPUs, 1080p Display
New System76 Darter Pro Coming Soon With Intel 8th Gen CPUs, 1080p Display

Should you not be into the new Dell XPS 13 9380 with Ubuntu pre-loaded nor the new Librem laptops that rely on older Intel CPUs, another option is coming with System76 that is releasing a new version of their Darter Pro laptop. The new System76 Darter Pro is built around Intel's 8th Gen mobile processors.

29 January 2019 - System76 Darter Pro - 32 Comments
The Current Hardware Specifications For Purism's Librem 5 Phone

Just before Christmas, Purism began shipping the Librem 5 developer kits and with that increasing questions about the Librem 5 Linux smartphone, the company has published some new FAQs about the security-minded smartphone as well as publishing a concise list of the currently planned specifications.

28 January 2019 - Librem 5 - 46 Comments
The Linux Kernel Likely To See A Hardware Accelerator Subsystem

Given the increasing rise of hardware accelerators for compute offloading of particular tasks especially now around deep/machine learning with more chips coming to market, the Linux kernel will likely soon see the introduction of a formal subsystem for these different accelerator drivers.

27 January 2019 - Linux Hardware Accelerators - 4 Comments
Open-Source Linux Driver Published For Habana Labs' "Goya" AI Processor
Open-Source Linux Driver Published For Habana Labs' "Goya" AI Processor

Habana Labs is one of the companies working on an "AI" processor for speeding up deep learning inference and training workloads. Their initial product is the Goya processor that is already production-qualified. Today they published initial open-source Linux kernel driver patches for review to potentially include in the mainline kernel moving forward.

22 January 2019 - Linux + Habana Goya AI Processor - 9 Comments
There's Early Stage Work Exploring Z-Wave Linux Kernel Drivers

Z-Wave is the incredibly common wireless communication protocol at the backbone of many home automation systems. To date there hasn't been any in-kernel Z-Wave Linux kernel drivers for this low-energy mesh network standard, but a SUSE developer has prototyped an initial driver and currently exploring the in-kernel possibilities, including what could end up being a Z-Wave subsystem.

20 January 2019 - Z-Wave + Linux Kernel - 8 Comments
Lczero Neural Network Chess Benchmarks With OpenCL Radeon vs. NVIDIA
Lczero Neural Network Chess Benchmarks With OpenCL Radeon vs. NVIDIA

Yesterday I posted a number of Lczero chess engine benchmarks on NVIDIA GPUs using its OpenCL back-end as well as its CUDA+cuDNN back-end, which offered massive performance gains compared to CL on the many tested NVIDIA GPUs. With the CUDA+cuDNN code performing so much better than OpenCL, some wondered whether NVIDIA was intentionally gimping their OpenCL performance. Well, here are results side-by-side now with Radeon GPUs on OpenCL.

15 January 2019 - Lczero OpenCL - 11 Comments
Aquantia Announces Multi-Gig Ethernet Controllers, Coming Soon To ASUS Boards

2019 is looking to be the year where we will finally see Multi-Gig Ethernet controllers appearing on desktop/enthusiast motherboards rather than Gigabit Ethernet controllers. Aquantia is using CES to show off its new Multi-Gig controllers and has already courted ASUS to use their chips on forthcoming motherboards.

7 January 2019 - Aquantia AQtion - 52 Comments
The x86 Platform Driver Updates Land In Linux 4.21

The platform-drivers-x86 was one of the first pull requests that landed into the now-open Linux 4.21 kernel tree. This area is primarily about various Intel laptop drivers and other x86 (x86_64) hardware bits.

27 December 2018 - Intel Platform Drivers - Add A Comment
MIPS Preparing Many Changes For Linux 4.21

The MIPS CPU architecture has suddenly become a bit more interesting now that the processor ISA will be open-sourced in 2019. With the in-development Linux 4.21 kernel there are a number of MIPS support changes inbound.

25 December 2018 - MIPS + Linux 4.21 - 5 Comments
The ECC DDR4 RAM Overclocking Potential With AMD Threadripper On Linux

In this guest post by Phoronix reader Max E, he has shared with us his experience and Linux benchmarking results when overclocking ECC RAM on an AMD Threadripper box. The process ended up being surprisingly easy and his results are quite compelling. Thanks to Max for this guest post, which we happily accept on Phoronix that cover interesting technical topics.

23 December 2018 - ECC DRAM Overclocking - 41 Comments
The I3C Subsystem Seeks To Be Included In Linux 4.21

The I3C subsystem had sought to be included in Linux 4.20, but ultimately it was rejected for being too late in the cycle for introducing a brand new subsystem. But now it's requested to be pulled into the upcoming Linux 4.21 merge window.

19 December 2018 - I3C + Linux 4.21 - 3 Comments
AMD Adding STIBP "Always-On Preferred Mode" To Linux

Initially during the Linux 4.20 kernel merge window with the STIBP addition for cross-hyperthread Spectre V2 mitigation it was turned on by default for all processes. But that turned out to have a sizable performance hit so the behavior was changed to only turn it on for processes under SECCOMP or when requested via the PRCTL interface. However, AMD is landing a patch that for select CPUs will have an always-on mode as evidently that's preferred for some AMD processors.

14 December 2018 - Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictors - 9 Comments
Initial i.MX8 SoC Support & Development Board Possibly Ready For Linux 4.21

While the i.MX8 series was announced almost two years ago and the open-source developers working on the enablement for these new NXP SoCs hoped for initial support in Linux 4.17, the Linux 4.21 kernel that will be released in the early months of 2019 is slated to possibly have the first i.MX8 support in the form of the i.MX8MQ and also supporting its development/evaluation board.

10 December 2018 - i.MX8MQ - 7 Comments
Revised High Resolution Scroll Wheel Support For Logitech/Microsoft Mice On Linux

Originally slated for the current Linux 4.20 kernel cycle was high-resolution scroll wheel support for Logitech mice. Just a short time after merging, the support was reverted as it ended up breaking support for some existing devices. Fortunately, the revised implementation is progressing and perhaps will be ready for Linux 4.21.

6 December 2018 - High Resolution Scroll Wheel - Add A Comment

2112 Hardware news articles published on Phoronix.