Eclipse Foundation launches Edge Native Working Group

The Eclipse Foundation announced an “Edge Native Working Group” to develop open source software for edge computing, starting with its Eclipse ioFog and Eclipse fog05 projects. Members include Adlink, Bosch, Edgeworx, Eurotech, Huawei, Intel, Kynetics, and Siemens. The Edge Native Working Group is a “vendor-neutral and code-first industry collaboration that will drive the evolution and broad adoption of open source software for edge computing,” says the Eclipse Foundation. The new working group will develop an end-to-end software stack that will support IoT, AI, autonomous vehicles, and more.

Graphics: GraphicsFuzz, RadeonSI, Mesa, Corruption Issues and Unisoc

• Google Releases GraphicsFuzz 1.3 For Continuing To Fuzz GPU Drivers

  GraphicsFuzz is the project born out of academia a few years ago for fuzzing GPU drivers to find OpenGL / OpenGL ES (WebGL) driver issues. This work was ultimately acquired by Google and then open-sourced just over one year ago. Today marks the release of GraphicsFuzz 1.3. GraphicsFuzz these days is no longer about just OpenGL / GLES and GLSL shaders but also operating on SPIR-V shaders for consumption by Vulkan drivers. There are also GLSL/SPIR-V shader reducers in addition to the fuzzer that relies upon randomized metamorphic testing.

• RadeonSI Driver Switches To NIR, Thereby Enabling OpenGL 4.6 By Default For AMD GPUs

  Mesa 20.0 due out in Q1'2020 is now the magical release that is set to switch on RadeonSI NIR usage by default in place of the TGSI intermediate representation. What makes this IR switch-over prominent is that OpenGL 4.6 is then enabled by default on this open-source Gallium3D driver supporting Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs and newer. Recently in Mesa 20.0-devel, RadeonSI plumbed in OpenGL 4.6 support but it was contingent upon enabling NIR due to sharing some code-paths with the NIR-built RADV Vulkan driver around the SPIR-V code. NIR is the intermediate representation that most Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan drivers are focusing on and is more versatile than the likes of TGSI, the traditional IR of Gallium3D that has been around a decade.

• Mesa 19.3 Is Introducing A Lot Of Open-Source OpenGL + Vulkan Driver Improvements

  Mesa 19.3 could be released as soon as this week after being challenged by several delays over blocker bugs. This release should be making it out in the days ahead and is a fantastic Christmas gift to Linux desktop users and a big step-up for these OpenGL / Vulkan driver implementations as we end out 2019. Among the many changes to find with this quarterly Mesa3D update are finally having OpenGL 4.6 for Intel, initial Intel Gen12/Tigerlake support, Zink was merged for OpenGL on top of Vulkan, Radeon Vulkan ACO back-end added for better Linux gaming performance, many new Vulkan extensions supported on both the Intel and Radeon drivers, the Intel Gallium3D driver is now in excellent shape, there are more Intel performance optimizations, and a lot of other changes throughout.

• Radeon OpenGL Linux Driver Gets Fix For Corruption Issues

  An issue affecting some Linux users with Radeon graphics for at least the last four months around graphics corruption problems when switching to newer versions of the Linux kernel have been resolved. On Linux 5.2+ have been reports of some graphics corruption issues in cases like web browsers. While the issue manifested with a kernel upgrade, the resolution is a change to the RadeonSI OpenGL driver. Besides the aforelinked DRM bug report, there has also been other similar bug reports like garbled graphics.

• Unisoc Looking To Introduce A New DRM Display Driver For Mainline Linux

  Unisoc, the Chinese SoC provider for smartphones that is part of the Tsinghua Unigroup, has published a new open-source DRM display driver that ultimately they are looking to get into the mainline kernel. Out today is just the "request for comments" patches for this Unisoc "SPRD" Direct Rendering Manager display driver. The twelve thousand lines of driver code wire up their display controller, MIPI DSI, MIPI DPHY, and the Unisoc display subsystem. The patches were worked on by Unisoc with cooperation from Linaro. All of this driver work is on the display front as their SoCs for 3D/GPU capabilities rely upon Arm Mali and Imagination PowerVR IP.

today's howtos

• Offline way of installing Apps on your Ubuntu PC

• How to use systemd to troubleshoot Linux problems

• How to install Mastodon Social Network with Docker on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• How to View Saved WiFi Passwords on Debian 10

• Advanced Bash Scripting Guide

• Easy libvirt IPv6 routed network