An Overview Of The Linux 3.14 Kernel Features

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 3 February 2014 at 02:17 PM EST. 1 Comment
LINUX KERNEL
With yesterday's release of the Linux 3.14-rc1, here's a look at the top features that were merged for introduction in the Linux 3.14 kernel.

The mentioned features are what I've found most interesting about this next major kernel release to date based upon the dozens of articles I've already authored on Phoronix about Linux 3.14, my testing already of 3.14 development code on multiple systems, analytics via Anzwix, etc.

- Nouveau has new NVIDIA GPU support although it's still missing any meaningful re-clocking / power management support thus leaving its performance in an awful state for modern GPUs.

- Intel Broadwell graphics support is in good shape but more changes are coming in Linux 3.15. On a related note is also Broadwell audio support.

- Big VMware SVGA2 graphics driver changes in preparation for a new virtual GPU in its virtualization software.

- NVIDIA Tegra PRIME support although the Tegra K1 Nouveau support is coming for a future kernel release.

- Radeon DPM improvements and other fixes for the open-source AMD driver. RadeonSI UVD support now also works properly.

- AMD Cryptographic Coprocessor support under Linux via a new driver. This is important now that AMD announced its first 64-bit ARM server SoC.

- Generic CPU Boost.

- F2FS performance improvements for the Flash-Friendly File-System.

- New features and performance improvements for Btrfs.

- Kernfs was born out of sysfs.

- Xen PVH support for new Xen virtualization possibilities on modern Intel/AMD hardware.

- SCHED_DEADLINE finally made it into the mainline Linux kernel.

- BCache and blk-mq updates.

- Support for MIPS latest CPU core on Linux.

- Xtensa SMP support.

- TCP Auto Corking is a new networking feature found in Linux 3.14.

Stay tuned for many Linux 3.14 kernel benchmarks and other articles looking closely at the new kernel functionality and performance in the days and weeks ahead, especially with the new open-source test farm under construction.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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