Intel Speed Select Linux Tool Updated To Handle 32 Socket Servers

The intel-speed-select tool that lives within the Linux kernel source tree has seen a set of patches prepared for the upcoming Linux 6.6 merge window. Arguably most interesting with this updated Intel Speed Select tool is now the ability to work with more than eight CPU sockets per platform — the new limit is 32…

Source: Phoronix – Intel Speed Select Linux Tool Updated To Handle 32 Socket Servers

AMD Inception / Speculative Return Stack Overflow Linux Mitigation Code Being Cleaned Up

As soon as the AMD Inception CPU vulnerability was made public yesterday, the Linux kernel mitigation patches were merged and within hours appeared in six new stable point releases for the kernel along with the Intel Downfall mitigation patches. Today though these patches are seeing a rework to clean-up this mitigation…

Source: Phoronix – AMD Inception / Speculative Return Stack Overflow Linux Mitigation Code Being Cleaned Up

Six New Stable Linux Kernel Updates For Intel DOWNFALL & AMD INCEPTION

As a result of the AMD INCEPTION and Intel DOWNFALL speculative execution vulnerabilities published this Patch Tuesday, Linux 6.5 Git quickly picked up the patches on embargo expiration and now there are six new stable point releases for back-porting these CPU security vulnerabilites to the supported stable kernel series…

Source: Phoronix – Six New Stable Linux Kernel Updates For Intel DOWNFALL & AMD INCEPTION

Intel 20230808 Microcode Published For DOWNFALL, Other Security & Functional Issues

In addition to the Linux kernel patches for GDS/Downfall for reporting the mitigated state and handling around Intel’s latest speculative execution vulnerability, the updated CPU microcode has now been published on GitHub. In addition to having the Downfall mitigations for Skylake through Icelake/Tigerlake, there are also other security updates and functional issues resolved by this Intel 20230808 CPU microcode release…

Source: Phoronix – Intel 20230808 Microcode Published For DOWNFALL, Other Security & Functional Issues

Intel DOWNFALL: New Vulnerability Affecting AVX2/AVX-512 With Big Performance Implications

This Patch Tuesday brings a new and potentially painful processor speculative execution vulnerability… Downfall, or as Intel prefers to call it is GDS: Gather Data Sampling. GDS/Downfall affects the gather instruction with AVX2 and AVX-512 enabled processors. At least the latest-generation Intel CPUs are not affected but Tigerlake / Ice Lake back to Skylake is confirmed to be impacted. There is microcode mitigation available but it will be costly for AVX2/AVX-512 workloads with GATHER instructions in hot code-paths and thus widespread software exposure particularly for HPC and other compute-intensive workloads that have relied on AVX2/AVX-512 for better performance.

Source: Phoronix – Intel DOWNFALL: New Vulnerability Affecting AVX2/AVX-512 With Big Performance Implications

Intel Begins Posting GCC Compiler Patches For AVX10.1

Last month Intel announced APX and AVX10 as the successor to AVX-512 that will see both P and E cores in the future supporting this updated Advanced Vector Extensions implementation. Delightfully, today Intel engineers began posting GCC compiler patches for beginning to enable AVX10 support…

Source: Phoronix – Intel Begins Posting GCC Compiler Patches For AVX10.1

Intel Gets Hogwarts Legacy Running On Linux Driver By Pretending Not To Be Intel Graphics

Those running Intel Arc Graphics on Linux can now enjoy the Hogwarts Legacy game under Valve’s Steam Play. Intel engineers were able to get this open-world action RPG game running on their open-source Vulkan driver by hiding the fact that Intel graphics were rendering this game…

Source: Phoronix – Intel Gets Hogwarts Legacy Running On Linux Driver By Pretending Not To Be Intel Graphics

Linux Decides To Disable RNG On All AMD fTPMs

As a follow-up to the first-on-Phoronix article last month that highlighted Linus Torvalds’ frustrated views on the AMD fTPM hardware random number generator continuing to cause problems for users even with updated firmware/BIOS, as of today the Linux kernel has gone ahead and blanket disabled RNG use for all current AMD fTPMs…

Source: Phoronix – Linux Decides To Disable RNG On All AMD fTPMs