Messages

16

User Zone / Re: Calling for gaming experiences

« on: July 29, 2024, 09:43:58 am »

The VkDoom project is an effort to improve GZDoom’s renderer performance with Vulkan, and I’m happy to report that it runs substantially better on Power9 than GZDoom if you have the right hardware for it. Build instructions are essentially identical to vanilla GZDoom, and outside of the lack of a ZScript JIT it runs very well.

DSDA-Doom and Woof are also excellent ports, and run much faster. Have fun Dooming.

17

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Linux 6.10

« on: July 17, 2024, 11:10:47 am »

That's good news. Is there any word on whether Xe works in kernel 6.10? I know there were issues with an Ampere Altra, but from what I remember the PCIe implementation there is a little hinkier than what we've enjoyed on Power9.

18

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 40 is officially released!

« on: July 01, 2024, 08:50:56 pm »

It was not. Doing a comparison with Rosetta enabled versus ARM-native yielded this result:

Running timedemo demo1 for DOS Quake v1.07 at 320x200 in DOSBox-Staging:
Rosetta: 80.5 fps
Native: 145.0 fps

I don't know why I thought the Air pulled 200+ fps earlier, but 145 fps is easily high-end Pentium III territory regardless.

19

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 40 is officially released!

« on: July 01, 2024, 10:13:40 am »

I'm not sure, actually. I'll have to load it up on my M1 Air and check it out. The x86_64 figure could be because those don't use dynrec, but ARM should ... unless you're running the Intel Mac build on your M2, not an Apple silicon build?

You're right - I figured the Ryzen was largely running native code. To the point on Apple Silicon, the DOSBox Staging build I snagged indicated it was a Universal Binary for Apple Silicon and Intel, but I  wonder if it it's running an Intel-native binary and doing an end run around dynrec. Let me know what you find on the M1.

20

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 40 is officially released!

« on: June 30, 2024, 09:55:28 am »

I'm not worried, Redneck Rampage was always flaky and in hours since it hasn't so much as burbled - which means DOSBox-Staging is at least as stable as any actual DOS machine I ever ran.

Incidentally, I did a performance comparison of DOSBox-Staging between my three machines by running Quake in 320x200, and both my M2 Air and Ryzen 5700GE notch over 200 fps, while the Power9 wrangles about 35. I want to be clear that I'm not complaining: the Power9 is delivering performance that feels very much like a midrange Pentium, which means it's sufficient for anything that all but crazy people would ask of MS-DOS, but I am curious about the sheer amount of that difference.

21

Blackbird / Re: Availability of P9 hardware post-ISA 3.1 HW launch

« on: June 29, 2024, 10:34:57 pm »

I've seen one or two motherboard/CPU combos pop up on eBay, never for more than a few days at a time. The CPUs are readily available, frequently for rates that make me seriously contemplate snagging another motherboard... until I look back and see how high the prices have risen. Oi. I love my Blackbird and use it every day, to the point that it's become my main machine unless I run into something it literally can't do, but I couldn't rationalize getting another one now.

It would not be surprising to see Blackbirds and Talos boards become more available with time - ARM workstation motherboards are becoming more abundant and performant, the platform is aging, RISC-V keeps threatening to grow into more than a cargo cult that'll re-order the embedded market. But nobody's getting mine.

22

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 40 is officially released!

« on: June 25, 2024, 10:58:17 am »

Yeah, something was borked with the default DOSbox-Staging on F40. I installed the suggested --advisory=FEDORA-2024-b6cc2aa248` and that mitigated my issues, though I did have DOSBox hard lock once while running Redneck Rampage with a VESA mode enabled afterward. Fortunately the Rednukem source port compiled and ran effortlessly on the hardware. I'll try out other DOS games as free time becomes available... to test the stability, of course.

23

General CPU Discussion / Re: Byte Magazine Unix benchmarking

« on: June 09, 2024, 05:48:29 pm »

That is a pretty stark difference. What’s your storage configuration?

24

General CPU Discussion / Re: Byte Magazine Unix benchmarking

« on: June 08, 2024, 08:25:31 pm »

Apparently upgrading to dual NVMe drives in a HighPoint Rocket 1204 really helped versus SATA!

Code: [Select]

Architecture:             ppc64le
  Byte Order:             Little Endian
CPU(s):                   32
  On-line CPU(s) list:    0-31
Model name:               POWER9, altivec supported
  Model:                  2.3 (pvr 004e 1203)
  Thread(s) per core:     4
  Core(s) per socket:     8
  Socket(s):              1
  Frequency boost:        enabled
  CPU(s) scaling MHz:     58%
  CPU max MHz:            3800.0000
  CPU min MHz:            2166.0000
Caches (sum of all):     
  L1d:                    256 KiB (8 instances)
  L1i:                    256 KiB (8 instances)
  L2:                     4 MiB (8 instances)
  L3:                     80 MiB (8 instances)
NUMA:                     
  NUMA node(s):           1
  NUMA node0 CPU(s):      0-31
Vulnerabilities:         
  Gather data sampling:   Not affected
  Itlb multihit:          Not affected
  L1tf:                   Mitigation; RFI Flush, L1D private per thread
  Mds:                    Not affected
  Meltdown:               Mitigation; RFI Flush, L1D private per thread
  Mmio stale data:        Not affected
  Reg file data sampling: Not affected
  Retbleed:               Not affected
  Spec rstack overflow:   Not affected
  Spec store bypass:      Mitigation; Kernel entry/exit barrier (eieio)
  Spectre v1:             Mitigation; __user pointer sanitization, ori31 speculation barrier enabled
  Spectre v2:             Mitigation; Software count cache flush (hardware accelerated), Software li
                          nk stack flush
  Srbds:                  Not affected
  Tsx async abort:        Not affected


Code: [Select]


========================================================================
   BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.3)

   System: garlic: GNU/Linux
   OS: GNU/Linux -- 6.8.11-300.fc40.ppc64le -- #1 SMP Mon May 27 14:48:15 UTC 2024
   Machine: ppc64le (unknown)
   Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
   19:21:24 up 1 day,  5:15,  1 user,  load average: 1.02, 0.93, 0.53; runlevel 2024-06-07

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Sat Jun 08 2024 19:21:24 - 19:49:33
32 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables       43041836.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     4837.3 MWIPS (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                               3534.7 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks        505013.3 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks          129743.4 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks       1617495.7 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                              780267.9 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                  45540.0 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                               4907.1 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   4964.0 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                   4012.3 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                         745210.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   43041836.3   3688.2
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       4837.3    879.5
Execl Throughput                                 43.0       3534.7    822.0
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     505013.3   1275.3
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0     129743.4    783.9
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0    1617495.7   2788.8
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     780267.9    627.2
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      45540.0    113.9
Process Creation                                126.0       4907.1    389.5
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       4964.0   1170.7
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0       4012.3   6687.1
System Call Overhead                          15000.0     745210.3    496.8
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                         982.0

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Sat Jun 08 2024 19:49:33 - 20:17:50
32 CPUs in system; running 32 parallel copies of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables      458837067.6 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                   113857.0 MWIPS (9.9 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                              37688.4 lps   (29.9 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks       7241790.7 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks         1936219.8 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks      12073774.9 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                            11005546.8 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                1753793.6 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                              68433.7 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                  70747.1 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                   9283.9 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                       13679550.5 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0  458837067.6  39317.7
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0     113857.0  20701.3
Execl Throughput                                 43.0      37688.4   8764.8
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0    7241790.7  18287.4
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0    1936219.8  11699.2
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0   12073774.9  20816.9
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0   11005546.8   8846.9
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0    1753793.6   4384.5
Process Creation                                126.0      68433.7   5431.2
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4      70747.1  16685.6
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0       9283.9  15473.2
System Call Overhead                          15000.0   13679550.5   9119.7
                                                                   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                       12583.4



25

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Intel Arc Support in Kernel 6.8

« on: May 21, 2024, 10:01:13 am »

Phoronix put up an article on May 12th indicating that a branch of Xe intended for merging into kernel 6.10 runs with some stability issues on an Ampere Altra. Obviously ARM's not Power, and I have a feeling there's something fidgety about the Altra's PCIe root complex that doesn't apply to our kit, so maybe we'll be in luck soon...? I may be crazy for dreaming that the 16GB Arc A770 I have sitting in a box would be a nicer option than the 8GB RX 6600 I'm currently running, but here's hoping.

26

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 40 is officially released!

« on: May 07, 2024, 07:53:44 pm »

And now, after updating and rebooting, the default Image Viewer fails to load an image, citing



This also causes SELinux to catch three errors:

1. Source process systemd-coredump attempted access sys_admin on capability (blank)
2. Source process abrt-dump-journal attempted access connectto on unix_stream_socket io.systemd.Home
3. Source process abrt-dump-journal attempted access connectto on unix_stream_socket io.systemd.Machine

Ristretto works and I'm running Xfce anyway, but what the hell.

27

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 40 is officially released!

« on: May 06, 2024, 06:46:19 pm »

Disregard - decided I must have followed a bad post-setup guide for F39 that broke something in the installer, so I went ahead and performed a clean install while maintaining my /home partition’s contents. Reporting in, it’s… working fine? Apart from Chromium, which is behaving as others have mentioned: it’s quick initially but bogs down and seems to stare into space in fits and starts before finally locking up and crashing. Sharkcz’s copr of Firefox 115.10 with the honorable ClassicHasClass’s JIT patches to the rescue.

28

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 40 is officially released!

« on: May 04, 2024, 07:39:10 am »

Joy of joys - in setting up my clean install of Fedora 39 I did some media repo poking, opting for Red Hat’s non-free sources so I could get video acceleration properly working in YouTube and VLC. But when I try to run the Fedora 40 upgrade it kvetches that it can’t find corresponding packages and throws the brakes on things. Should I run it with —allow-erasing and prepare to redo my repo selection on the other side?

29

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Intel Arc Support in Kernel 6.8

« on: April 06, 2024, 08:45:50 pm »

I realize I'm late getting back to this, but that's a bummer. I'm guessing the xe driver isn't behaving better now that kernel 6.8's actually out in the wild, then.

30

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Unexpected suspend of Fedora 39 on Talos II

« on: April 02, 2024, 06:23:57 am »

Ah, thanks for this. I ran afoul of my machine going into suspend over the weekend, and this should set things right going forward.