Hardware News Archives

It turns out there is actually people running modern versions of the Linux kernel in 2021 that also are using floppy disks.

While Loongson has been known for their MIPS-based Loongson chips that are open-source friendly and have long been based on MIPS, with MIPS now being a dead-end, the Chinese company has begun producing chips using its own "LoongArch" ISA. The first Loongson 3A5000 series hardware was just announced and thanks to the company apparently using the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org we have some initial numbers.

Libre-SOC that started out as Libre RISC-V in aspiring to be an open-source software/hardware Vulkan accelerator but then renamed to Libre-SOC after changing over to the OpenPOWER architecture is now seeing test fabrication done using TSMC's 180nm process.

The Linux 5.14 input subsystem updates have landed with new hardware support and other changes.

Intel open-source engineers continue working on the bring-up around Compute Express Link (CXL) as the new open standard interconnect built off PCIe aiming to empower next-generation servers.

The POWER architecture updates have been submitted for the ongoing Linux 5.14 merge window with a few changes worth pointing out this round.

The MIPS code within the Linux kernel remains in a mature but rather stagnate state while the upstream MIPS architecture development has ceased and most vendors these days using Arm or RISC-V instead or even OpenPOWER prospects. But there still are some ongoing MIPS improvements to the Linux kernel.

The HID subsystem updates for Linux 5.14 continue improving consumer device support from newer AMD Ryzen laptops to multi-touch improvements.

Headlining the power management updates for the Linux 5.14 merge window is the Intel P-State CPU frequency scaling driver now being adapted to handle hybrid processors.

A proposal by NVIDIA engineers for the mainline Linux kernel would introduce the Hardware Timestamping Engine (HTE) subsystem.

Linux 5.14 is bringing a new input driver to support an open-source joystick that can be used for DIY electronics purposes and other use-cases. The schematics and firmware are open-source for building the joystick device yourself or can be purchased for about $10 USD.

The MSM DRM driver changes have been submitted to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.14 cycle for improving this open-source Qualcomm Adreno kernel graphics/display driver.

In conjunction with supported Lenovo systems, a new "Think-LMI" driver is on its way to the mainline Linux kernel for allowing some BIOS/firmware settings to be accessed and configured within Linux.

For those that have been wanting to build a passively cooled PC or at least keeping the number of fans to a minimum, Noctua just officially announced the NH-P1 as their high-end passive cooler. It's a massive heatsink but aims to be able to cool higher-end AMD and Intel desktop processors.

Platform Runtime Mechanism was incorporated into the ACPI 6.4 specification earlier this year and allows moving some system management interrupt (SMI) handlers out of the system management mode (SMM) "black box" and into the OS/VMM execution context. With Linux 5.14 initial work on ACPI Platform Runtime Mechanism is set to land.

As a quick follow-up to last year's L-shaped desk build for accommodating plenty of displays, laptops, and more, it's still working out very well.

Earlier this year was talk of Linux finally removing its legacy IDE subsystem that has been deprecated for years in favor of just maintaining the still-supported libata code for IDE support. The libata path is much better supported and matured for nearly two decades, but one of the holdouts was some Motorola 68000 series hardware -- like early Macintosh computers -- not being supported outside of the legacy context. That is finally set to change with Linux 5.14 so in turn the legacy IDE code will likely be able to be removed soon.

For those thinking about picking up a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 laptop powered by Intel's latest-generation "Tiger Lake" processors, that model will see its second fan now properly supported by the current Linux 5.13 cycle.

With May quickly drawing to a close, here are some fresh Linux gaming benchmark figures for the latest AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards on their respective latest Linux graphics drivers while looking at the performance across a variety of OpenGL and Vulkan games/workloads.

Last year we wrote about Dell working on a hardware privacy driver for Linux as with 2021 laptops they are beginning to add hardware-based privacy buttons for disabling microphone and camera support. That Dell Hardware Privacy platform support is now set to be introduced to the mainline kernel with Linux 5.14.

The Rowhammer security exploit affecting DRAM memory modules has a new chapter with Google now detailing "half-double" as a new technique for exploit of system memory.

It's sounding like a vendor is readying to publish a "big" new open-source driver, likely a GPU driver, for the Linux kernel.

ARM server vendor Ampere Computing has been working on an SSIF BMC-side driver for the Aspeed ASTC2500 baseboard management controller that they are looking to upstream in the Linux kernel.

The Adreno 660 is the GPU found within the Snapdragon 888 SoC as a significantly improved graphics processor compared to the Adreno 650. Support for the Adreno 660 is now on the way to the open-source MSM DRM driver for the Linux kernel.

Well known BIOS provider AMI is getting in on the open-source system firmware game around OpenBMC and related projects.

The OpenPOWER Foundation today announced LibreBMC as a POWER-based, open-source BMC.

Support for the Loongson 2K1000 is finally mainline with the forthcoming Linux 5.13 kernel.

The PowerPC architecture pull request for the Linux 5.13 cycle brings some improvements to its 32-bit support and other enhancements.

Linux's perf tooling for dealing with hardware performance counters and associated monitoring has seen a number of nice updates for the Linux 5.13 kernel cycle.

While PipeWire continues garnering interest this year for improving Linux sound in user-space, the kernel's sound drivers continue to be improved upon as well and tacking on support for new devices.

As the first announcement of a newly-certified product by the Free Software Foundation since early 2020 as "Respect Your Freedom" compliant, the FSF is backing another 802.11n WiFi adapter.

When it comes to Apple hardware support in the Linux 5.13 kernel not only is support for the Apple M1 SoCs added but the Magic Mouse 2 is also finally being supported in full by the mainline kernel. Plus there are other various interesting HID subsystem updates too this kernel cycle.

The crypto subsystem updates have landed in the Linux 5.13 kernel.

Greg Kroah-Hartman sent in the big batch of USB and Thunderbolt subsystem updates on Monday for the in-development Linux 5.13 kernel.

Working on the Linux power management code is a never-ending and increasingly important task. The ACPI and power management updates were sent in today for the Linux 5.13 merge window though this isn't as exciting as some of the recent kernels heavy on CPUFreq and P-State changes.

Since the SD card specification v4.0 there has been the notion of extension registers initially for power management features that in the SD v6.0 specification also is now used for performance features. The Linux kernel is finally beginning to work towards making use of those SD extension registers.

HiSilicon engineers continue working on a cluster scheduler that could help the performance of certain x86 and ARM platforms on Linux.

Over the past year there has been an uptick in Linux developers from different vendors working on laptop privacy screen support under Linux. When it comes to the support with newer Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, it looks like that kernel support could soon land and the GNOME desktop is already preparing to support this feature.

Earlier this month I reported on a WMI temperature driver for Gigabyte motherboards being worked on by an independent developer. That "gigabyte-wmi" driver is now slated for inclusion in the upcoming Linux 5.13 cycle.

The Linux Foundation's OpenBMC project to provide an open-source BMC firmware stack is quite exciting for freeing this low-level aspect of servers, but finding a supported motherboard that works well with OpenBMC can be a challenge at this stage. Fortunately, Linux 5.13 is set to support a lower-cost motherboard option in hopes of boosting OpenBMC development/usage.

The MSM DRM driver changes have been sent to DRM-Next for this Freedreno aligned project providing open-source graphics/display driver support for Qualcomm SoCs.

Newer Gigabyte motherboards may soon enjoy a new Linux driver for exposing component temperatures.

For older Logitech keyboards that operate on a 27MHz radio frequency they may have a new lease on life as well as being more secure thanks to a new Linux utility.

For those that happen to be running FSP/3Y-Power hot-swappable power supplies, a Linux driver is en route.

Earlier this month I mentioned Loongson 2K1000 Linux patches were published with an effort now to upstream them some four years after these 40nm dual-core MIPS-based hardware launched. That Loongson-2K1000 support is now queued in MIPS-next ahead of the Linux 5.13 cycle.

Last week we noted how a kernel driver for NZXT's Kraken AIO liquid cooling devices was under review for the mainline kernel. Shortly after that point the driver did get successfully picked up for hwmon-next and thus should be appearing in the upcoming Linux 5.13 cycle.

Two fixes were queued this week into the Linux kernel's power management "linux-next" branch that could help improve the power management behavior for some devices as up to now the Linux kernel was not properly following the ACPI specification.

The Generic USB Display Driver "GUD" has just been sent in as part of the latest DRM-Misc-Next material to DRM-Next which in turn will land for Linux 5.13. The Generic USB Display Driver is nifty and allows for opening up possibilities like turning a Raspberry Pi Zero into a USB to HDMI display adapter among other fun use-cases.

Announced back in 2019 was the OpenPOWER Microwatt FPGA Soft CPU Core. OpenPOWER's Microwatt is a VHDL-based design for an open-source POWER ISA processor. core. The Microwatt is a basic 64-bit POWER core that can be run for software simulations or on FPGA hardware. But now Microwatt will actually see chip fabrication thanks to a program sponsored by Google.

It's looking like the Linux 5.13 kernel will better support some Thrustmaster wheels due to new driver code providing for proper USB device initialization.