Linus Torvalds' Initial Comment On Rust Code Prospects Within The Linux Kernel
Kernel developers appear to be eager to debate the merits of potentially allowing Rust code within the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds himself has made some initial remarks on the topic ahead of the Linux Plumbers 2020 conference where the matter will be discussed at length.
[...] Linus Torvalds chimed in though with his own opinion on the matter. Linus commented that he would like it to be effectively enabled by default to ensure there is widespread testing and not any isolated usage where developers then may do "crazy" things. He isn't calling for Rust to be a requirement for the kernel but rather if the Rust compiler is detected on the system, Kconfig would enable the Rust support and go ahead in building any hypothetical Rust kernel code in order to see it's properly built at least.
Linus Torvalds Wishes Intel's AVX-512 A Painful Death
According to a mailing list post spotted by Phoronix, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has shared his strong views on the AVX-512 instruction set. The discussion arose as a result of recent news that Intel's upcoming Alder Lake processors reportedly lack support for AVX-512.
Torvalds' advice to Intel is to focus on things that matter instead of wasting resources on new instruction sets, like AVX-512, that he feels aren't beneficial outside the HPC market.
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AVX-512: A "Hidden Gem"?
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2020, @09:58PM (3 children)
It's crap because it's an instruction set for only some intel processors, which even intel is not including in all their processors, which only makes it even useless than it already is. So a waste of resources for pretty much every which way.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday July 14 2020, @03:02AM
Makes Intel look good on specific benchmarks though.
(Score: 1) by petecox on Tuesday July 14 2020, @03:08AM (1 child)
I use a package-based distribution, so yes, I probably wouldn't see any benefit.
Some use to Gentoo's user base who compile every optimisation for every piece of software on their machines!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2020, @04:43AM
AVX-512 is only a benefit in really specific circumstances. Other than those, it hurts performance and can hurt it quite badly. One of the biggest reasons why is that in order for AVX-512 to work, the entire CPU is clocked down, slowing all other threads on that chip for the duration of that part of the pipeline.