Software Linux Reviews & Articles

There have been 899 Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles on Phoronix for software. Separately, check out our news section for related product news.

LLVM Clang Shows Off Great Performance Advantage On NVIDIA GH200's Neoverse-V2 Cores
LLVM Clang Shows Off Great Performance Advantage On NVIDIA GH200's Neoverse-V2 Cores

With my recent NVIDIA GH200 Grace CPU benchmarks carried out remotely via GPTshop.ai, besides looking at areas like the 64K kernel page size performance benefits I also ran some fresh benchmarks looking at the performance difference when the binaries were generated by LLVM Clang rather than the default GCC compiler on Ubuntu Linux. This article shows off the performance difference for the 72-core Neoverse-V2 server/HPC processor when leveraging LLVM Clang rather than the GNU Compiler Collection.

18 March 2024 - 6 Comments
The Performance Impact Of Intel's Register File Data Sampling "RFDS" Mitigation
The Performance Impact Of Intel's Register File Data Sampling "RFDS" Mitigation

Earlier this week on Patch Tuesday was the disclosure by Intel of the Register File Data Sampling (RFDS) vulnerability and mitigation via updated CPU microcode and a kernel patch. RFDS is around malicious user-space software potentially being able to infer stale register values from kernel space. Register File Data Sampling affects recent Intel Atom / E-core bearing processors including the latest Raptor Lake Refresh processors. In this article are some initial benchmarks of the RFDS performance impact under Linux when using the Core i9 14900K processor.

15 March 2024 - 15 Comments
64K Kernel Page Size Performance Benefits For HPC Shown With NVIDIA's GH200 Grace CPU
64K Kernel Page Size Performance Benefits For HPC Shown With NVIDIA's GH200 Grace CPU

By default the AArch64 kernel on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions tend to default to a standard 4K page size but for newer AArch64 hardware especially in the server/HPC space, there can be great benefits to using a 64K page size. As it's been a while since I last ran any 64-bit ARM 4K vs. 64K kernel page size benchmarks, while having remote access to the NVIDIA GH200 I ran a fresh comparison for looking at the performance advantages to switching over to a 64K page size kernel. These new 64K kernel numbers are shown alongside the recent AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon CPU reference benchmark results for a look at how the 4K vs. 64K page size affects the overall computing landscape.

27 February 2024 - 9 Comments
Linux 6.8 Features Excite With New Intel Xe Driver, Performance Optimizations & New Hardware
Linux 6.8 Features Excite With New Intel Xe Driver, Performance Optimizations & New Hardware

While the Linux 6.8 kernel merge window has been over for several weeks now, due to a busy February of new hardware releases and lots of Linux hardware reviews/benchmarking, I've been behind in writing up my Linux 6.8 feature recap. For those wanting a concise look at the many great changes coming with Linux 6.8 that will debut as stable in March, here's an overview of the interesting Linux 6.8 changes.

23 February 2024 - 15 Comments
GCC vs. Clang Compiler Performance On Intel Meteor Lake
GCC vs. Clang Compiler Performance On Intel Meteor Lake

Last week I posted a number of fresh GCC vs. LLVM Clang compiler performance benchmarks using an AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX (Zen 4) system using the HP Z6 G5 A workstation running Ubuntu Linux. For those wondering about the performance of GCC vs. Clang generated binaries on something much more modest, here are some benchmarks when testing on a Meteor Lake laptop with the Core Ultra 7 155H.

4 January 2024 - 48 Comments
GCC 13 vs. Clang 17 Compiler Benchmarks, Early Clang 18 & GCC 14 Development Benchmarks
GCC 13 vs. Clang 17 Compiler Benchmarks, Early Clang 18 & GCC 14 Development Benchmarks

As it's been a while since last delivering any competitive GCC versus LLVM Clang compiler competitive analysis and with the year quickly drawing a close, here's a fresh look at the GCC vs. Clang C/C++ compiler performance of various resulting application binaries tested on x86_64. GCC 13 vs. Clang 17 were tested as what's readily available on Ubuntu 23.10 Linux plus a look ahead in using the latest GCC 14 and LLVM Clang 18 development snapshots as of this week.

28 December 2023 - 13 Comments
SNC/NPS Tuning For Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Series To Further Boost Performance
SNC/NPS Tuning For Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Series To Further Boost Performance

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series offer great performance out-of-the-box for Linux desktop/workstation users as shown in my Ryzen Threadripper 7970X and 7980X benchmarks along with the Threadripper PRO 7995WX. While a more common tunable on the EPYC side, the Threadripper 7000 series can also benefit from Nodes Per Socket (NPS) / Sub-NUMA Clustering (SNC) tuning for enhancing the performance of some workloads. In this article is a look at dozens of benchmarks while looking at the performance impact of SNC2/SNC4 adjustments for the Zen 4 Threadripper.

1 December 2023 - 10 Comments
Another Look At The Bcachefs Performance on Linux 6.7
Another Look At The Bcachefs Performance on Linux 6.7

Immediately after the Bcachefs file-system was upstreamed into the Linux 6.7 kernel I began running some benchmarks on this new copy-on-write file-system. Shortly thereafter some scalability improvements and disabling a debug option by default were merged. So with the Bcachefs work for Linux 6.7 settling down the past few weeks, here's a fresh look at how Bcachefs is performing against the likes of EXT4, XFS, F2FS, and Btrfs.

30 November 2023 - 81 Comments
Benchmarking The Performance Cost To Full Disk Encryption For Modern AMD Ryzen Laptops
Benchmarking The Performance Cost To Full Disk Encryption For Modern AMD Ryzen Laptops

With the new AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U Zen 4 mobile processor powering the likes of the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4, I was curious about the performance impact of employing full disk encryption. Here are some benchmarks looking at the performance cost to enabling full disk encryption versus not utilizing any disk encryption while running Fedora Workstation on the new ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 AMD laptop.

25 October 2023 - 30 Comments
Linux 6.5+ Is Great For The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 / AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U
Linux 6.5+ Is Great For The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 / AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U

As shown already the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4 with AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U works out well on Linux and is very speedy as shown with that prior benchmarking on Linux 6.3, but for those moving to Linux 6.5 or newer the performance and power efficiency is even better. Like for those moving to the newly-released Ubuntu 23.10 with Linux 6.5, there are some nice performance gains to find with this laptop -- similar to the experience seen with various AMD Ryzen desktops on the new kernel.

20 October 2023 - 23 Comments
Intel Xeon Max Enjoying Some Performance Gains With Linux 6.6
Intel Xeon Max Enjoying Some Performance Gains With Linux 6.6

In addition to Linux 6.6 delivering better results on AMD EPYC servers, Intel Xeon Max / Sapphire Rapids is also picking up some performance wins on this forthcoming version of the Linux kernel. Here are some comparison benchmarks looking at the Intel Xeon Max 9480 2S performance between Linux 6.5 stable and the upcoming Linux 6.6 kernel.

12 October 2023 - 1 Comment
The Downfall Mitigation Impact For Xeon E-2300 Series On Linux 6.5
The Downfall Mitigation Impact For Xeon E-2300 Series On Linux 6.5

Last month the Downfall CPU security vulnerability was disclosed that impacts various AVX/AVX-512 workloads. Now that there's been a few weeks for the Linux kernel code to settle around the mitigation and the latest Intel CPU microcode becoming more broadly available, here is a fresh look at the performance impact of the Downfall mitigation on affected AVX workloads.

25 September 2023 - 3 Comments
Linux 6.5 With AMD P-State EPP Default Brings Performance & Power Efficiency Benefits For Ryzen Servers
Linux 6.5 With AMD P-State EPP Default Brings Performance & Power Efficiency Benefits For Ryzen Servers

With the new Linux 6.5 kernel stable series one of the many new features is defaulting to the AMD P-State driver with the EPP/active mode compared to the long-used default of the ACPI CPUFreq driver. As shown in various Phoronix articles this can help with the mobile/desktop performance with this new default change while this article is looking at the Ryzen for server benefits too.

21 September 2023 - 23 Comments
Linux 6.6 Looks To Be Very Lucrative For AMD Server Performance
Linux 6.6 Looks To Be Very Lucrative For AMD Server Performance

As a continuation of last week's article looking at Linux 6.6 bringing some impressive gains for AMD EPYC Bergamo, over the past few days I've also tested Linux 6.5 stable and Linux 6.6 Git on Genoa and Genoa-X processors as well as Intel Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" in looking at this next kernel version's performance. The Sapphire Rapids performance was largely flat while for an interesting class of workloads the Linux 6.6 performance drives the AMD EPYC server performance much higher.

19 September 2023 - 21 Comments
Intel oneAPI Initiative Evolves Into The Unified Acceleration "UXL" Foundation
Intel oneAPI Initiative Evolves Into The Unified Acceleration "UXL" Foundation

Here's a surprise announcement I was briefed on last week and now made public by the Linux Foundation and Intel... The Linux Foundation is forming the Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation that is an evolution of Intel's oneAPI initiative and has the potential to make the compute accelerator ecosystem as a whole more open and unified across vendors.

19 September 2023 - 7 Comments
A Nasty Performance Regression For Some Intel Systems Wound Up In Linux 6.5 Stable
A Nasty Performance Regression For Some Intel Systems Wound Up In Linux 6.5 Stable

While catching up on my Linux kernel benchmarking across different systems the Intel Core i9 13900K "Raptor Lake" desktop performance has been particularly volatile. Linux 6.5 is running slower for the Core i9 13900K compared to Linux 6.4 for a number of different workloads. Buckle up for a wild ride but the good news is a stable fix is forthcoming.

13 September 2023 - 5 Comments
Linux 6.5+ Bringing Some Performance/Efficiency Improvements For The AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme / ASUS ROG Ally
Linux 6.5+ Bringing Some Performance/Efficiency Improvements For The AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme / ASUS ROG Ally

With the recently released Linux 6.5 kernel bringing AMD P-State EPP by default for modern Ryzen systems rather than the generic ACPI CPUFreq driver, running Linux 6.5 (or newer) in various workloads can lead to improved performance and/or power efficiency. Curious about the impact on the mobile side, I recently carried out some benchmarks of the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld with AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC from Linux 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, and 6.6 Git kernels.

8 September 2023 - 3 Comments
Ryzen 9 7950X Performance With The New AMD P-State Default Of Linux 6.5
Ryzen 9 7950X Performance With The New AMD P-State Default Of Linux 6.5

The Linux 6.5 kernel is expected to be released as stable this weekend barring any last minute issues from being raised. One of the notable changes with this new kernel version is Linux now defaulting to the AMD P-State "EPP" active driver configuration for modern Ryzen systems rather than the long-used generic ACPI CPUFreq driver default. In some cases this can mean better performance but particularly should yield a nice improvement to the power efficiency of Ryzen Zen 2 and newer platforms, especially laptops and other portable Linux systems like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. I am working on some fresh AMD Ryzen Linux laptop comparison benchmarks but for this article is a look at Linux 6.5 on the desktop side with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.

24 August 2023 - 20 Comments
AMD Ryzen 7 7840U Windows 11 vs. Linux CPU Performance
AMD Ryzen 7 7840U Windows 11 vs. Linux CPU Performance

Over the past month I've been delivering a number of Linux laptop tests with the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U for that Zen 4 "Phoenix" SoC within an Acer Swift Edge 16. One of the requests that has come up with my ongoing testing has been how well the default Microsoft Windows 11 installation compares to loading up Linux on this 8-core AMD Zen 4 laptop. Well, in this article is a look at the Linux performance compared to Windows 11, including when making use of the Linux 6.5 development kernel where AMD P-State is now the default and also for seeing what workloads are impacted by the recent AMD Inception vulnerability.

18 August 2023 - 66 Comments
Benchmarking The Performance Impact To AMD Inception Mitigations
Benchmarking The Performance Impact To AMD Inception Mitigations

Last week the AMD Inception vulnerability was made public as a speculative side channel attack affecting Zen processors and different mitigation options based on the CPU generation. There wasn't too much communication around the performance implications of mitigating Inception while over the past week I have begun benchmarking the software and microcode updates on Ryzen and EPYC processors.

15 August 2023 - 35 Comments
Initial Benchmarks Of The Intel Downfall Mitigation Performance Impact
Initial Benchmarks Of The Intel Downfall Mitigation Performance Impact

With yesterday's disclosure of the Intel Downfall speculative execution vulnerability and the updated CPU microcode and Linux kernel patches I have been very busy testing the performance impact of this mitigation. Here are some initial numbers and workloads I have found to be impacted as a result of this security mitigation for Skylake to Icelake/Tigerlake client and server processors.

9 August 2023 - 46 Comments
LLVM Clang 16 vs. GCC 13 Compiler Performance On AMD 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa"
LLVM Clang 16 vs. GCC 13 Compiler Performance On AMD 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa"

With the recent stable releases of LLVM's Clang 16 and GCC 13 compilers there is now initial AMD Zen 4 "znver4" support in these open-source compilers. Curious about the performance difference between these two compilers on the very newest AMD 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa" server processors, I ran some LLVM Clang 16.0 and GCC 13.1 benchmarks on the flagship EPYC 9654 2P Linux server.

30 May 2023 - 12 Comments
LLVM Clang 16 vs. GCC 13 Compiler Performance On Intel Raptor Lake
LLVM Clang 16 vs. GCC 13 Compiler Performance On Intel Raptor Lake

For those wondering how the recent releases of the Clang 16 and GCC 13 are competing for the fastest generated binaries of these leading open-source compilers, here is a fresh round of benchmarks from an Intel Core i9 13900K "Raptor Lake" system looking at the performance for a variety of C/C++ workloads built under each of these compilers.

11 May 2023 - 35 Comments

899 software articles published on Phoronix.