Linux on ARM

• SoC
• compatibility
• kernel

A few days back there was the main ARM pull request for Linux 4.21 with new SoC and board support. A second ARM pull request has been submitted now during the final moments of the 4.21 kernel merge window and it offers up some new features, most notably the initial i.MX8 SoC support.

• server
• mips

Wave, a startup developing hardware for deep learning in data centers, open sources the decades-old MIPS architecture.

• driver
• 64bit
• compatibility
• amd

Up to now the AMDKFD kernel driver needed for running the ROCm user-space has only worked on x86_64 CPUs, but with some simple changes, it turns out this Radeon compute kernel driver can work on 64-bit ARM as well.

• driver
• update
• compatibility
• mips
• kernel

After Greg K-H handling Linux 4.19 release, Linus Torvalds is back at the helm, and released Linux 4.20 just before Christmas:

• kernel

While already in use by Android's version of the Linux kernel, the ARM-developed Energy Aware Scheduling support is set to finally be mainlined for the Linux 4.21 kernel.

• ubuntu
• other_linux
• benchmark
• redhat
• fedora
• versus

Last month Amazon rolled out their "Graviton" ARM processors in the Elastic Compute Cloud. Those first-generation Graviton ARMv8 processors are based on the ARM Cortex-A72 cores and designed to offer better pricing than traditional x86_64 EC2 instances.

• driver

ARM developers have posted their first public patches for the new "Komeda" display driver for the Linux kernel that offers DRM/KMS integration.

• linaro
• development

The ARM Linux developers continue working on Energy Aware Scheduling (EAS) for the mainline Linux kernel to better handle systems with asymmetric CPU topologies, namely SoCs like those with ARM big.LITTLE cores.

• server
• redhat

If there’s one thing that the past several years of IT evolution have taught us, it’s that choice is king. This starts with enterprises not wanting to be locked into a closed, single vendor technology stack. Choice now not only includes the option of footprint -  from bare-metal servers to public cloud instances - but also the underlying architecture powering a technology stack.

• server
• redhat
• 64bit

Amazon has developed AWS Graviton processors optimized for cloud applications and delivering power, performance, and cost optimizations over their Intel counterpart. The processors feature 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and custom silicon designed by AWS themselves, and can be found today in Amazon EC2 A1 instances.

• raspberrypi
• suse
• compatibility

GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton has made a new distro for the tiny Raspberry Pi single-board computers, this time based on the popular openSUSE Tumbleweed operating system and the lightweight Xfce desktop environment.

• raspberrypi
• COM
• benchmark
• versus

Released last week was the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ as their latest ARM SBC coming in at the $25 USD price point and their last board release before doing a redesign. I was able to snag a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ for $25 with availability appearing to be better than some of the past Raspberry Pi releases. Here are some initial benchmarks of the RPi 3 Model A Plus compared to a few other ARM boards.

• development
• compatibility
• IoT

Esri has launched an Arm Linux version of its ArcGIS Runtime SDK for Qt aimed at GIS mapping and analytics applications such as in-vehicle fleet management.

• fedora
• 64bit

The Fedora Project announced the final release of the Fedora 29 Linux operating system, a major update that comes six months after the previous version.

• other_linux
• raspberrypi
• 64bit

Offensive Security released Kali Linux 2018.4, the fourth and last snapshot in 2018 for their ethical hacking and penetration testing GNU/Linux distribution, the successor of BackTrack Linux.