Hardware News Archives

In recent days a number of feature patches were queued in HID-next to provide new driver features and hardware support within the Human Interface Device subsystem.

The DeviceTree additions to allow the Orange Pi 5 64-bit ARM single board computer (SBC) to work on the upstream Linux kernel are working their way closer to mainline.

The upcoming Linux 6.6 kernel will finish removing old remnants of Wireless USB support.

The Linux kernel's "dimmtemp" driver allows for reporting memory temperatures with capable memory modules and when exposed by the Intel processor's PECI (Platform Environment Control Interface). Currently though the DIMM temperature driver is hard-coded to only allow reporting up to 32 DIMMs while a change queued for Linux 6.6 will extend that limit.

While Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) on Intel/AMD x86_64 processors is limited to providing one additional thread per core, SMT on IBM POWER hardware can provide 4-way and even 8-way SMT for some processor models. With Linux 6.6 the /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control interface is being extended to allow greater control over managing partial SMT states in cases of the CPUs supporting more than 2-way SMT at Linux run-time.

Qualcomm engineers have begun rolling out a new open-source V4L2/media driver for a new Qualcomm "Iris" video accelerator hardware for video encode and decode on Qualcomm SoCs.

For processors supporting CPU performance boosting with higher performance states available beyond the base states, Linux allows toggling the boosting on a per-CPU basis. However, a new patch proposed this week would allow per-policy performance boosting where capable.

Loongson Binary Translation (LBT) support for the Chinese LoongArch CPU architecture is slated for introduction in the upcoming Linux 6.6 cycle. Loongson Binary Translation aims to help speed-up and handle ARM / x86 / MIPS binary translation on LoongArch more efficiently with capable LoongArch processors.

The DRM subsystem is slated to pickup a GPU Virtual Address "VA" Manager with the Linux 6.6 kernel that is motivated by work around Vulkan sparse memory binding requirements.

In addition to Intel engineers being responsible for much of the Linux kernel driver work around USB4 and Thunderbolt, they have now published thunderbolt-utils as a collection of user-space utilities for managing USB4/Thunderbolt on Linux environments.

Similar to the Dell WMI system management driver and Lenovo's Think-LMI driver, the HP-BIOSCFG driver now poised for introduction in Linux 6.6 allows for managing and configuring BIOS settings on capable HP laptops/desktops from under Linux itself.

Queued up ahead of the Linux 6.6 cycle later this summer is a new input driver for the Azoteq IQS7210A/7211A/E controllers.

Imagination Technologies today published their fourth iteration of their in-development PowerVR DRM kernel graphics driver targeting their Rogue architecture and future graphics IP. This open-source kernel driver ultimately will go along with their PowerVR Vulkan driver they continue developing within the Mesa code-base.

For months Linux hardware vendor System76 has been teasing their in-house designed and manufactured "Virgo" laptop to be built at their facility in Denver. They are hoping to develop the quietest yet most performant Linux laptop. Today they published the initial open-source design files for their custom motherboard PCB in this laptop.

Among the many interesting changes that landed the past two weeks for the Linux 6.5 merge window, the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates as a whole standout for bringing numerous desktop motherboards and other devices to now enjoy working sensor monitoring support under Linux.

Hopefully by now all of you have moved off PS/2 mice and keyboards, but should you still have some old systems chugging along with PS/2 hardware, there are some improvements to find with the Linux 6.5 kernel currently under development.

While it's likely been years since most of you touched any Firewire devices, for those still having any old DV cameras around or professional audio hardware with an IEEE-1394 interface, Linux 6.5 is bringing improvements to its Firewire subsystem that until recently has been rather dormant for years.

The Compute Express Link (CXL) enablement in the Linux kernel remains ongoing and with the in-development Linux 6.5 kernel are yet more features now being enabled for this exciting industry standard.

China's Loongson continues preparing the software support for their upcoming 3A6000 processors that will feature several new capabilities over their inaugural LoongArch-based 3A5000 series.

The PCI subsystem updates have been submitted for the ongoing Linux 6.5 development.

The Arm (and RISC-V) SoC updates have been submitted for merging to the Linux 6.5 kernel. Additions this cycle include an exciting RISC-V processor now supported, NVIDIA Tegra234 "Orin" upstream additions, and other new SoCs and devices/boards being upstreamed.

For those that have been fans of System76's Thelio desktop computer cases but prefer building your own systems, System76 today officially launched their "Nebula" line of PC cases.

Nearly a decade ago when there was more hope for the MIPS open-source ecosystem and the initial growth of lower-cost single board computers the MIPS Creator CI20 was launched by Imagination Tech. It wasn't too successful and MIPS development has since reached the end of the road, but finally with Linux 6.5 is the Bluetooth and WiFi on this MIPS single board computer going to finally be supported by the mainline kernel.

The HID subsystem updates have been submitted for the ongoing Linux 6.5 merge window. Most notable is NVIDIA contributing a Linux kernel driver six years late for their SHIELD controller.

Added to the Linux kernel back in 2020 was a community-written Corsair power supply driver for exposing various sensor data that their higher-end PSUs make available via a USB interface. This reverse-engineered "corsair-psu" driver has continued to be improved upon and adding support for newer Corsair PSUs. A new patch out this weekend extends the corsair-psu driver for handling newer 2022~2023 model power supplies.

If your newer desktop motherboard has a NCT6799D Super I/O controller or one of the variants like NCT6799D-S, the Linux 6.5 kernel is set to introduce support for this ASIC in order to expose hardware sensor support under Linux.

Since last month Loongson engineers have begun posting Linux patches enabling their upcoming 3A6000 series LoongArch processors under Linux. Yesterday they posted new patches and revealed that Loongson 3A6000 processors support Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT).

Ahead of the planned full specification release in 2025, the PCI-SIG has now shared with its members the first review draft "v0.3" of PCI Express 7.0.

For those running HP or HP-Compaq business-class systems whether they be desktops or laptops, improved hardware sensor reporting is expected for the upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel thanks to a new HP WMI Sensors driver set to be mainlined.

With Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP for better securing virtual machines on the mainline Linux kernel, memory is accepted/initialized immediately at boot time by the VMs although the capability exists to have "unaccepted memory" where that memory is only dealt with by the VMs later on or on an as-needed basis. For two years now Intel engineers have been working on this unaccepted memory support and this week posted their thirteenth iteration of these fundamental Linux kernel patches.

The Linux 1-Wire "w1" subsystem is used for supporting drivers with hardware that communicates via a single wire (plus ground) in a simple master-slave configuration The Linux kernel has drivers such as for W1 over GPIO, i2c to W1 bridge, and supporting some very old hardware. The W1 subsystem hasn't seen much work recently while for the upcoming Linux 6.5 cycle will be seeing a larger update.

In addition to System76 developing an in-house Linux laptop design, it also turns out they have been working on a new desktop/workstation PC offering.

Chinese hardware vendor Loongson is working on extending the open-source, reverse-engineered Etnaviv Linux kernel graphics driver so it has PCI device support and in turn will work with their hardware based on the Vivante graphics IP.

The folks at Purism have announced their latest product in the form of the Librem Server v2. Starting out at $2999 USD, these new servers are built around four-year-old 9th Gen Core CPUs already discontinued by Intel.

System76 continues teasing the in-house laptop design they are working on codenamed Virgo.

Sent out last week by Alexandre Bailon with Bay Libre is the AI Processing Unit "APU" Direct Rendering Manager driver to interface between CPUs and AI Processing Units. The hope is this APU driver could be re-used by various hardware drivers while the initial focus is on bringing up the AI capabilities of the MediaTek MT8183 SoC.

The 61st edition of the TOP500 supercomputer list has been published this morning. The Frontier supercomputer continues to hold the top spot and the only true Exascale system.

The folks at OnLogic have released the Axial AC101 as a new edge server offering that is powered by Intel Core 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" processors and this BMC-enabled, shallow-depth server can accommodate up to 150 Watt PCI Express expansion cards in aiming to make this compact edge server ideal for machine learning, AI, and other IoT use-cases.

While the Loongson 3A6000 processors have yet to be officially launched, rumors since last year put it on target for launching in the first half of this year and some claims that there is such performance uplift that these Chinese CPUs could rival AMD Zen 3 or Intel Tiger Lake levels of performance. Ahead of the 3A6000 series launch, Linux patches have begun appearing for these next-gen LoongArch processors.

Following the Corsair MP700 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD review under Linux with many readers being surprised by file-system errors when not adding extra cooling like the motherboard's passive M.2 heatsink and being curious about the situation myself, here are more tests of ultimately how this drive will reliably hit file-system errors in three minutes or less without added cooling.

The input driver updates were merged on Tuesday for the ongoing Linux 6.4 merge window.

The USB/Thunderbolt changes were merged last week for the Linux 6.4 kernel and it ended up being a net reduction in the number of lines of code as a result of ditching two outdated USB drivers.

The HID subsystem updates were merged this week for the Linux 6.4 kernel that is now half-way through its merge window.

As noted back in March, the plan with Linux 6.4 is to start removing old, unused and unmaintained PCMCIA drivers. As part of that process to begin dropping old PCMCIA/CardBus driver code from the kernel, all of the PCMCIA "char" drivers were on the chopping block. Linus Torvalds pulled in the char/misc changes this week for Linux 6.4 and indeed those drivers are now removed. Meanwhile this pull introduced the new AMD CDX subsystem.

Matrox announced on Thursday their new graphics card series LUMA... The Matrox LUMA isn't powered by their own GPU design but rather they are now tapping Intel for their Arc Graphics discrete GPUs.

The hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates have been pulled into the in-development Linux 6.4 kernel with ASUS Intel/AMD desktop motherboards being the big winners with these driver updates.

For those with a Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1/convertible laptop, a tablet mode switch driver is set to be merged for Linux 6.4 to properly handle the tablet mode switching support for these devices while running the mainline Linux kernel.

The mainline Linux 6.4 kernel is set to see a new touchscreen driver for supporting the Novatek NVT-ts, which is used by at least a once popular Intel Atom powered Android tablet from a decade prior.

Following the Intel Meteor Lake VPU driver being added to the new accelerator "accel" subsystem in Linux 6.3 along with converting over the Habana Labs AI driver, coming in Linux 6.4 is now the Qualcomm QAIC Cloud AI driver to this subsystem that lives within the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) umbrella.

While for a number of years now System76 has manufactured their own Thelio desktop line of Linux PCs from their facility in Denver, Colorado (and their Launch Keyboard), they have long talked up ambitions for eventually manufacturing their own Linux laptops rather relying on other white-label manufacturers as they currently do. Today a first glimpse of their in-house laptop prototyping was shared,