泰晓资讯·12月 / 第三期 / 2015

Anandtech: 2016 的 AMD GPU：全面拥抱开源

AMDGPU is part of a larger effort for RTG to unify all of their Linux graphic driver needs behind a single driver. … With AMDGPU, RTG will be producing both a fully open source and a mixed open/closed source driver, both using the AMDGPU kernel space driver as their core.

At SC15 AMD announced their Boltzmann initiative to develop a CUDA source code shim and the Heterogeneous Compute Compiler for their GPUs, all of which will be built on top of their new Linux driver and the headless + HSA abilities it will be able to provide.

Being announced today is RTG’s GPUOpen initiative, which will combine RTG’s various SDKs and libraries under the single GPUOpen umbrella, and then take all of these components open source.

关键词：合并与开源。驱动实现之内核层合并，叫做 AMDGPU。面向应用开发的 SDKs/Libraries 合并，对垒 NVIDIA’s GameWorks，叫做 GPUOpen。两者均开源，汇集来自各方的改进。

unity3d: Firefox 之 WebGL 性能碉堡；Edge 次之；Safari 追平 Chrome

mesa-dev: Intel 做了个新的 Mesa 软件渲染实现，OpenSWR，巨快

Our rasterizer functions as a “software gpu”, relying on the mature well-supported Mesa3D to provide API and state tracking layers.

Intel 内用的软件图形栈迁至 Mesa 上并开源。聚焦科学可视化领域，相比 llvmpipe 快 29 到 51 倍。

也许是透视 GPU 运作（See GPU Run）的一个不错起点？

Phoronix：貌似 Intel 终于在 Linux 开启了 PSR

Panel Self Refresh has been available for a few years now via the (e)DP DisplayPort 1.3 specification from VESA. The idea behind Panel Self Refresh is to have the display keep using the same frame-buffer whenever the contents are unchanged, which can allow power-savings by shutting down unnecessary GPU circuitry.

Nicolai Hähnle: 调试 GPU 虚存之访存错误，on AMD GPU

Rich Geldreich: GPU 纹理压缩之未来

Intel gfx：i915 DRM 驱动的一个 buffer 批量提交调度器

The scheduler aims to have a given (tuneable) number of batch buffers in flight on the hardware at any given time.

Phoronix: 体验搭载 Intel Clear Containers 技术的 Linux 发行版

Due to the primary use-case of Clear Linux, the distribution does not ship with a GUI display system by default, but there is a “bundle” for that – Clear Linux is based upon RPM packages but uses swupd as its package management system and relies upon a concept of bundles rather than packages.

Clear Linux also separates itself from other distributions via Clear Containers, is a stateless Linux system, uses AutoFDO for optimized binaries, KVM-based Clear Containers, and more.

All of the Clear Linux features are described in much greater detail at ClearLinux.org.

搭载 Clear Containers 技术的一个发行版。

LWN: x86 上新的内存保护机制：Memory Protection Keys

Memory Protection Keys for Userspace (PKU aka PKEYs) is a CPU feature which will be found in future Intel CPUs. … It works by dedicating 4 previously ignored bits in each page table entry to a “protection key”, giving 16 possible keys.

There is also a new user-accessible register (PKRU) with two separate bits (Access Disable and Write Disable) for each key. Being a CPU register, PKRU is inherently thread-local, potentially giving each thread a different set of protections from every other thread.

貌似同进程之线程间的访存保护技术。

Phoronix: 一个跟踪 库 ABIs 变化的工具

The ABI-Tracker visualizes ABI changes across releases of a C/C++ software library. The project is open-source and available via GitHub.