Intel Alder Lake system tested with Windows 11 and different Linux - Microsoft OS was slowest in 72% of tests

Phoronix has conducted a performance comparison test of the Intel Alder Lake platform with different operating systems.
It turns out that under different Linux distributions the computer is in most cases faster than under the latest Windows 11.The tests were done with an Intel Core i9-12900K processor, ASUS ROG Strix Z690-E Gaming WiFi motherboard, 32GB (2x16GB) of DDR5-6000 memory, 500GB WD Black SN850 SSD and an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card.
The configuration is one of the best by today's standards, able to handle both high resolution games and working applications, as well as working with content.
For the performance comparison, Windows 11 Pro, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on the stable Linux 5.18 kernel, and Intel Clear Linux version 36580 were chosen.Image source: phoronix.comTestors ran a total of 103 tests, with Clear Linux being the clear victor, scoring maximum points in 55 cases (53.4%), second with 19 wins (18.4%) to Ubuntu 22.
04 LTS, third place went to Windows 11 with 16 top scores (15.5%) and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with Linux 5.18 only 13 wins (12.6%).Image source: phoronix.com Image source: phoronix.com Of course, a benchmark is not a benchmark, and for most average users of flagship chips, gaming tests can be decisive.
On the other hand, it would be a mistake to ignore other tasks that determined the scoring in the test series: virtualization, data compression, rendering and video encoding - in all these cases, Linux family systems were faster.
Taking the cumulative result for all tests, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS was 4 percent faster than Windows 11, and in the case of Clear Linux the gap widened to 8 percent.
And Windows 11 was the worst performer in 72% of tests.

NVIDIA opens source code for Linux kernel graphics drivers

Nana Dua, Unsplash NVIDIA took a huge step towards the open-source application development community the day before by opening the Linux kernel driver source code for its graphics gas pedals.
The first open source driver has already been released, it's version R515 (515.43.04), the code is published in GitHub repository under the GPL/MIT dual license, also the company places ready-made builds.AdvertisementThe open source driver supports a wide range of graphics gas pedals based on Turing and Ampere architectures, it is fully ready for data center solutions, graphics support for business and consumer systems is still in alpha stage, but already allows to use some features and proprietary technology Added support for multiple displays, G-SYNC adaptive sync, NVIDIA RTX ray tracing in Vulkan, and the NVIDIA OptiX rendering engine.
NVIDIA will continue to improve support based on feedback from the community, third party developers, and working with companies such as Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE, with the open source driver potentially replacing the closed source one.
The benefits of an open source driver development approach include improved security, improved performance of NVIDIA GPUs on Linux, easier distribution, and easier integration with broader Linux communities.
Linux gamers are already looking forward to the inclusion of Valve's SteamOS distribution's Gamescope window composer support in NVIDIA drivers, as well as support for NVIDIA Image Scaling in the Proton compatibility layer, says GamingOnLinux.Source:NVIDIAGamingOnLinuxThere is a reward for this postIt was written by a website visitor and there are rewards for it.

Linux no longer supports AMD 3DNow! - they are over 20 years old.

Linux has stopped supporting the SIMD instruction set 3DNow! for AMD processors, writes Phoronix. The new 5.17 version of the Linux kernel has removed about 500 lines of code, which were responsible for running the said MMX extension, first released more than two decades ago.

The 3DNow! instruction set was released by AMD in 1998 along with the K6 3D processors, that is, 23 years ago. With it, the manufacturer wanted to gain superiority over processors made by Intel in the field of multimedia processing. 3DNow! technology introduced 21 new processor instructions and the ability to operate with 32-bit real types in standard MMX registers. Special instructions were also added to optimize switching to MMX/3DNow! mode and work with processor cache. So 3DNow! technology extended the capabilities of MMX technology without requiring the introduction of new CPU modes and new registers. In the late 90's and early 2000's this instruction set was heavily used by games, multimedia applications, and even Photoshop workflows. The 3DNow! instruction set was used from AMD K6 3D processors up to K10 (Phenom II) architecture. Shortly after AMD SSE instructions set for its own processors was released by Intel company. With release of Pentium 3 this instructions set became more popular, so by the moment of release of SSE2 AMD adapted it too. With the release of FX-series (Bulldozer) processors, AMD completely forgot about 3DNow! The last processors to support this instruction set were Phenom II. Nowadays, the main SIMD instruction set in AMD and Intel processors is SSE and its numerous variations (SSE2, SSE3, SSE4, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, SSE4A, SSE5 and others).

AMD released Linux patches to disable vulnerable PSF prediction mechanism

Last week it became known that AMD's Zen 3 architecture processors are vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Prominent representatives of this type of vulnerability are Spectre and Meltdown, which are mostly intrinsic to Intel processors. Later, AMD promised to provide Linux patches to disable PSF prediction engine which is vulnerable to these vulnerabilities. Today the distribution of these patches has begun.

According to Phoronix reporters there are five new Linux kernel patches which allow to disable Predictive Store Forwarding (PSF) on Ryzen 5000 and EPYC 7003 series CPUs. After installing this hotfix, PSF mechanism will still be enabled, but you will be able to disable it, if necessary. To do this, you need to set nopsfd in the boot parameters.

AMD itself does not consider the new vulnerability to be a real threat. The company warns that disabling the prediction mechanism may reduce processor performance. Nevertheless, tests have shown that disabling PSF has a minimal impact on performance. Users have found that the difference is only visible in long workloads, and even then there is a drop in performance of only 1-2 percent or less.

Disabling the vulnerable PSF mechanism in AMD Zen 3 processors almost does not reduce performance

AMD recently reported that the Predictive Store Forwarding (PSF) mechanism in Zen 3 processors is vulnerable to side-channel attacks (like Spectre and Meltdown), which are based on analyzing data deposited in the processor cache during speculative instruction execution. The company told users how they can protect themselves and disable this functionality, but did not comment on how it would affect performance. Phoronix journalists decided to clarify this issue.

(Phoronix).

The new Predictive Store Forwarding (PSF) mechanism in AMD Zen 3 processors has been exposed to a hardware vulnerability of reading data through a third-party channel. In theory, disabling this feature should reduce performance, and that's the effect we've seen with Intel processors during the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerability remediation process. But at the moment AMD refers to the fact that there are no known cases of PSF vulnerability exploitation, so it does not recommend end users to disable the functionality to avoid performance degradation. The PSF mechanism is disabled in Zen 3 processors by setting certain MSR bits. AMD has promised in a white paper to publish Linux patches to easily disable PSF if needed, but there are no publicly available patches yet.

(Phoronix).

Nevertheless, Michael Larabel from Phoronix has built a Linux operating system kernel with PSF disabled and has done dozens of tests with AMD Ryzen 5000 and EPYC 7003 series processors on bare-metal and PSF disabled kernels. According to him, the testing was done on a wide range of workloads, and each test was run automatically several times. As a result, it had to be stated that PSF disabling had a minimal effect on performance. In most cases the difference was within statistical error, although in some workloads it was close to 1 %. For example, Ryzen 7 5800X processor was run through a set of more than 100 tests. That said, averaging all the results suggests less than 1.5 % performance loss when the potentially dangerous Zen 3 feature is disabled.

(Phoronix).

In short, while AMD generally does not recommend its customers to disable PSF, if someone decides to take this step in the name of improving security, it probably won't result in any significant performance difference. Unlike other patches designed to combat attacks related to speculative command execution, this time everything was handled with little blood.

Linux notebook System76 Pangolin is built on AMD Ryzen 4000U processor

System76 announced the Pangolin portable computer running the operating system with the Linux kernel: the customer has a choice of software platforms Pop!_OS 20.10, Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

«Heart» notebook & ; AMD processor: modifications with Ryzen 7 4700U (eight cores; 2.0–4.1 GHz) and Ryzen 5 4500U (six cores; 2.3–4.0 GHz) chip will be available. DDR4-3200 can have up to 64 GB of RAM. The novelty is equipped with a 15.6-inch Full HD display with 1920 × 1080 pixels resolution. Video subsystem uses a gas pedal AMD Radeon Graphics. Via the HDMI interface, the image can be displayed on an external monitor or TV.

The M.2 SSD is responsible for data storage. In an arsenal of portable computer & ; Gigabit Ethernet network adapter, wireless controllers Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5, stereo speakers, backlit keyboard. Connector set includes USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C, USB 2.0 Type-A and microSD slot. Dimensions are 360 × 239 × 19.9mm, weight & ; 1.65kg. You can buy the Linux notebook System76 Pangolin at an approximate price from 850 USD.