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This kernel is simply huge: there is so many new and improved features with this particular release that it's mind-boggling. I'm having difficulty remembering such a time a kernel release was so large.
The quick summary of Linux 5.6 changes include: WireGuard, USB4, open-source NVIDIA RTX 2000 series support, AMD Pollock enablement, lots of new hardware support, a lot of file-system / storage work, multi-path TCP bits are finally going mainline, Year 2038 work beginning to wrap-up for 32-bit systems, the new AMD TEE driver for tapping the Secure Processor, the first signs of AMD Zen 3, better AMD Zen/Zen2 thermal and power reporting under Linux, at long last having an in-kernel SATA drive temperature for HWMON, and a lot of other kernel infrastructure improvements.
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Monday February 10 2020, @08:45PM (3 children)
And it still manages to run much slower than 'non-optimised' native code.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday February 11 2020, @12:30AM (2 children)
Native code vs native code? Did you read what I wrote? Did you understand the JIT compiler having the whole runtime picture?
In any case, it obviously is fast enough that Twitter rewrote [soylentnews.org] their stack in 2012 to Java, specifically for performance. What idiots they must be.
Java won't win every speed contest. It does win some. But it's not so slow as you think. (Greenspun's tenth rule [wikipedia.org]) For some reason it's been #1 in most of the last fifteen years [youtube.com], but never going below 2nd place.
There is a simple reason for Java's success. Since the beginning of computers in business, and mostly also in science, money has been the dominant concern. Once upon a time optimizing for dollars also meant optimizing obsessively for every last cpu cycle and byte. No more. Today we optimize for dollars, which means optimizing for developer time. The dominant cost today is developer time. For the price of a developer with benefits for only one year, say $100-$250K, you can buy a pretty sweet server box. Point being that hardware is cheap compared to developer time. That hardware will last more years than that cost of one developer for one year.
We're still optimizing for dollars, just not for bytes and cpu cycles any more. I know this may come as unwelcome news. I get a rush of dopamine every time I save cpu cycles or bytes. But I'm not obsessed with it. I know my true optimization is ultimately for dollars, which is developer time.
I don't cite the source here: a language is too low level when it forces you to focus on the irrelevant.
The irrelevant is anything that isn't relevant to the problem you're trying to solve.
This is the reality we live in. Hate it as you may, Java is number one. Please consider that there is probably a reason for that. Companies like Red Hat, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft are investing lots of money into research into JVM, its GC, and other VM optimizations. Why is that do you suppose? Not out of the goodness of their hearts. They think there is money to be made by investing major resources into Java.
Again, I'm sorry if this is unhappy news to you; But it is the REALITY of the world we live in. Not some fantasy world where bytes and cpu cycles are the dominant concern. Ah, to be a programmer back in the 1970's once again. But I can't go back.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:21AM (1 child)
You optimize for dollars... I mean developer time, until some developer optimizes in a better and faster way. Then you optimize for developers. It's so confusing for managers.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 12 2020, @08:27PM
Based on Java usage, managers don't appear to be confused about optimizing for
greeddollars.Never have been.
It's just that once long ago that also meant optimizing for bytes and cycles.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.