Linus Torvalds has released Linux 6.6-rc6 and plans to release the stable version of Linux 6.6 in two weeks, barring any unexpected issues. In the announcement, Torvalds mentioned that the previous week had been calm, with discussions focusing on future changes. He also mentioned a music video documentary that was made about the release. The changes in this release include a fix for a kernel crash when unplugging Logitech USB receivers and a fix for hung systems during shutdowns or reboots, which specifically affects Lenovo, Sony, and Dell systems, particularly recent Intel Alder Lake and Raptor Lake systems. Other fixes include support for the PXN V900 racing steering wheel and a fix for a Zen 4 CPU bug when running with “mitigations=off” or disabling IBRS. The stable release of Linux 6.6 is expected to debut on October 29th, followed by the start of the v6.7 kernel cycle.

Source: Phoronix.

Phoronix reports that the latest Linux kernel patches have been released for the Milk-V Pioneer board, a 64-core RISC-V micro-ATX board with impressive features such as two PCIe x16 slots. The board is built around the Sophon SG2042 SoC, which boasts 64 RISC-V CPU cores clocked at up to 2.0GHz, shared 64MB L3 cache, and support for quad-channel DDR4-3200 memory. The Sophon SG2042 has a TDP of 120W.

In addition to its 64-core CPU, the Milk-V Pioneer board offers four DDR4 memory slots, dual M.2 slots, three PCIe x16 slots using x8 lanes, five SATA ports, eight USB 3.2 ports, and dual 2.5Gb Ethernet ports. It is designed for micro-ATX enclosures and works with a conventional 24-pin ATX power supply. Overall, the Milk-V Pioneer is an incredibly interesting RISC-V development board that is currently in the process of being released to the market.

The Milk-V team has been working on upstreaming the Linux kernel support for the Milk-V Pioneer, and the recently published v4 patches enable basic driver support, allowing the kernel to boot to a basic console.

The board, along with a heatsink, is currently priced at $1499 USD and is available for pre-order. Shipping is expected to begin in December.

Source: Phoronix.

Phoronix reports that Linux will now indicate via /proc/cpuinfo if AMD virtualization (SVM) is disabled. This is a quality of life improvement for home lab virtualization when using AMD CPUs. Previously, checking for the presence of Intel virtualization support and its status could easily be done by looking at the flags in /proc/cpuinfo. However, SVM was always shown in /proc/cpuinfo regardless of whether it was disabled in the BIOS. This oversight is finally being corrected in the upcoming Linux 6.7 kernel cycle, with the possibility of back-porting the fix to existing kernel series.

The patch, developed by Red Hat’s Paolo Bonzini, has been queued into TIP’s x86/cpu branch. This patch will now read the appropriate MSR to verify if SVM has been disabled on AMD and Hygon processors. If SVM is disabled, the CPU capability will be cleared, and it will no longer show in /proc/cpuinfo. Previously, the only indication of AMD SVM being disabled was appearing in the kernel log or KVM virtualization failing to work. This small but useful change makes it much easier to check if virtualization is available via the widely-used /proc/cpuinfo interface.

Source: Phoronix.

Patches have been submitted to the Linux kernel mailing list to add support for the Milk-V Duo RISC-V development platform, reports Phoronix.

The Milk-V Duo features a CV1800B chip with two C906 processor cores. One core runs at 1GHz, while the second core runs at 700MHz. This dual RISC-V 64-bit chip is paired with 64MB of RAM. There is also an optional 10/100Mbps Ethernet via an add-on board. The board is targeted for use with Linux or RTOS. Interested individuals can learn more about this low-cost RISC-V embedded board on the milkv.io website. The patches for mainline Linux kernel support for the Milk-V Duo are currently under review on the LKML.

Source: Phoronix.

Phoronix reports that the first part of MSG_ZEROCOPY preparations for the VirtIO-Vsock driver has been queued into net-next, with plans for introduction in the Linux 6.7 kernel. This feature aims to improve performance within virtual machines by enabling message zero-copy support for the VirtIO/Vsock code. By allowing for more zero-copy of buffers, rather than creating extra copies on transmissions, this feature can lead to significant efficiency gains. Benchmarks on the patch series have shown impressive gains, particularly for buffer sizes at 32KB and larger. This development is of particular interest for home labs and virtual machine environments, as it has the potential to enhance virtual machine performance.

Source: Phoronix.

Phoronix reports that the upcoming Linux 6.7 kernel will introduce a new feature for Intel’s QuickAssist Technology (QAT) device driver. This feature will enable more efficient use of QAT Gen4 hardware, specifically the latest-generation Intel Xeon Scalable “Sapphire Rapids” processors.

The QAT Gen4 devices, which are currently available with select Sapphire Rapids processors, support chained compression “DC” operations. With this feature, a single firmware request can perform both hashing and compressing of data in one step.

The Linux kernel driver for Intel QAT is being extended to support the DC chaining service with the latest QAT accelerators. By allowing the data to be hashed and compressed in a single request, this feature reduces overhead and latency compared to making multiple requests to the QAT hardware.

Intel QAT is a hardware-based technology developed by Intel to accelerate cryptographic and data compression workloads. It offloads and accelerates specific operations, such as encryption, decryption, and compression, from the CPU to dedicated hardware accelerators. This improves performance and efficiency while freeing up CPU resources for other tasks.

Key features and benefits of Intel QAT include cryptographic acceleration, data compression, improved performance, reduced CPU utilization, hardware security, virtualization support, and various form factors such as PCIe cards and integrated solutions.

This new feature in Linux 6.7 will be of interest to those using home servers, as it allows for more efficient use of Intel QAT Gen4 hardware. By offloading cryptographic and compression tasks to dedicated hardware accelerators, home servers can experience significant performance improvements and reduced CPU utilization. This can lead to better handling of transactions and connections, lower power consumption, and improved overall system efficiency.

Source: Phoronix.