Kernel (Linux) News
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Beebom ☛ Intel Xeon ‘Clearwater Forest’ with New E-Cores Spotted in Linux Patch
Intel Xeon is a CPU lineup intended for high-end computing, packing a staggering amount of multi-core capability. The new Clearwater Forest processors have just been spotted in a Linux leak. While this new architecture is coming much later, the patch reveals the kind of E-core these will pack.
According to Intel’s roadmap, as revealed back in Innovation 2023, the company will be launching new Sierra Forest Xeon CPUs this year. Later in 2025, we could see the launch of new Intel Xeon Clearwater Forest processors. In the Linux patch details (via: Phoronix), it can be seen that these new server CPUs will come with Darkmont E-cores. We will discuss Intel’s roadmap and when to expect these new processors later.
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LWN ☛ The first half of the 6.8 merge window
The 6.8 merge window has gotten off to a relatively slow start; reasons for that include a significant scheduler performance regression that Linus Torvalds stumbled into and has spent time tracking down. Even so, 4,282 non-merge changesets have found their way into the mainline repository for the 6.8 release as of this writing. These commits have brought a number of significant changes and new features.
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LWN ☛ The kernel "closure" API
The data structure known as a "closure" first found its way into the mainline kernel with the addition of bcache in the 3.10 development cycle. With the advent of bcachefs in 6.7, though, it acquired a second user and was moved to the kernel's lib directory, making it available to other kernel users as well. The documentation of closures in the source is better than that of many things in the kernel, but there is still room for a gentler introduction.
As include/linux/closure.h notes: ""Closure is perhaps the most overused and abused term in computer science, but since I've been unable to come up with anything better you're stuck with it again"". In the kernel sense, a closure can be thought of as a reference count tracking some number of things that need to happen, along with some synchronization features and a hierarchical organization.