USB4STREAM, Optimizations, Jay & Other Popular Intel Linux News From This Quarter
With Q2'2026 working toward a close, here is a look back at the most popular Intel Linux and open-source news for the quarter.
Of nearly 100 Intel-related Linux/open-source/hardware related news articles this quarter, below is a look back at the most popular Intel news on Phoronix over the past three months. A lot has been happening from their software performance optimizations to enabling new hardware, the new Jay compiler, and more.
AMD & Intel Roll Out New Linux Updates For Today's Patch Tuesday
Today's Patch Tuesday is a busier one than normal for the quarter. Both AMD and Intel have rolled out new updates for Linux customers among other security disclosures today. Thankfully though the vulnerabilities don't appear to be too widespread or impactful.
Intel Introducing USB4STREAM Protocol For Linux - Opening Up Some Nifty Uses For USB4
An exciting Intel innovation expected to be added for the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is introducing the new USB4STREAM protocol for USB4/Thunderbolt as a "super simple" way to "basically just transfer raw packets from one host to another". This can be useful for quickly backing up a system from one host to another, sharing of web cameras or other peripherals across systems, or other environments where not having networking or wanting to avoid the traditional Linux networking stack.
Open-Source "low_latency_layer" Brings Reflex & Anti-Lag 2 To AMD & Intel GPUs On Linux
A new open-source project called low_latency_layer is an implicit Vulkan layer that enables AMD Anti-Lag 2 and NVIDIA Reflex 2 to reportedly work in a hardware-agnostic manner so that AMD and Intel graphics cards can both enjoy Reflex or Anti-Lag 2 working on non-AMD graphics cards as well.
Intel Ends Open Ecosystem Community/Evangelism, Archives Other Open-Source Projects
Over the past number of months there has been a steady flow of Intel open-source projects archived on GitHub amid the corporate restructuring at the company and realigning of their open-source focus. This week another batch of Intel open-source projects were formally archived.
KDE Plasma 6.7 Enables Overlay Planes For Intel Graphics, More Performance/Efficiency
KDE developers continued to land more feature changes for the upcoming Plasma 6.7 desktop release. It's a busy spring of fixes, optimizations, and shiny new features for Plasma 6.7.
Microsoft Announces Open-Source "Intelligent Terminal"
Microsoft today announced their newest open-source creation... Under the MIT license it's the Intelligent Terminal.
Intel Releases OpenVINO 2026.1 With Backend For Llama.cpp, New Hardware Support
Intel's OpenVINO toolkit for optimizing and deploying AI inferencing across their range of hardware platforms is out with its newest quarterly feature update. There is official support for Intel's latest hardware as well as enabling more large language models and other new AI innovations for this excellent open-source Intel software project.
Intel Compute Runtime 26.18.38308.1 Brings More Xe3P Enableement, Nova Lake P Support
Intel on Tuesday released a new version of their open-source Compute Runtime for OpenCL and Level Zero support across their integrated and discrete graphics hardware.
Many Wonderful Improvements Expected For Linux 7.1, Especially For AMD & Intel
With Linux 7.0 expected for release later today, in turn the Linux 7.1 merge window will kick off for the two week period of landing all sorts of exciting new features, changes, and removal of old features from the kernel. Here is a look at some of what is on the table for the Linux 7.1 merge window.
Linux 7.1 Released: New NTFS Driver, Intel FRED For Panther Lake, Faster Arc Graphics
Linus Torvalds just released the stable Linux 7.1 kernel and it's coming a half-day early thanks to his travel plans.
Linus Torvalds Merged The Code Beginning To Remove Intel 486 CPU Support In Linux 7.1
As a follow-up to the news first-covered on Phoronix earlier this month about Linux 7.1 expected to begin removing i486 CPU support: it indeed happened. Linus Torvalds took the initial removal bits today without any fuss today for beginning the phase out of M486 / M486SX / ELAN kernel support.
One Line x86 Change To GCC Compiler Nets +12% Benchmark Win For Modern Intel/AMD CPUs
A one line code change to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for its generic x86 tuning is benefiting modern Intel and AMD processors.
Intel Posts Fourth Version Of Cache Aware Scheduling For Linux
Just over one year ago Intel Linux engineers began working on cache-aware load balancing for Linux or more commonly referred to as Cache Aware Scheduling. The functionality for helping modern Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors especially hasn't yet been upstreamed to the Linux kernel but yesterday the fourth version of these patches were posted for review.
Intel LLM-Scaler vllm-0.14.0-b8.2 Released With Official Arc Pro B70 Support
As part of Intel's LLM-Scaler initiative for AI inferencing on Intel Arc hardware, out today is their vllm-0.14.0-b8.2 update that includes officially supporting the Arc Pro B70 graphics card.
Intel Formally Announces Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake"
Intel today formally announced the Core Series 3 low-end mobile processors previously known as Wildcat Lake. These are the new Intel 18A offerings that are a step below the Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" SoCs that began shipping earlier this year.
Intel's New Shader Compiler "Jay" Merged For Mesa 26.1
It was just a few days ago that Jay was publicly posted as the new shader compiler in-development for Intel GPUs on Linux for both their ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D drivers. While still very experimental, that initial Jay compiler code was merged today for Mesa 26.1-devel.
Many Intel & AMD Laptop Improvements Merged For Linux 7.1
As usual in recent years, there were many x86 platform driver changes merged this cycle for benefiting modern AMD Ryzen and Intel Core (Ultra) laptops. A variety of new features and laptop hardware support additions were merged for Linux 7.1.
Jay: A New Open-Source Shader Compiler Being Developed For Intel GPUs
Jay is a new open-source shader compiler being developed for Intel's open-source OpenGL and Vulkan Linux drivers. Ultimately this Jay shader compiler should help in delivering better Linux graphics performance with modern Intel hardware.
Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.32 Adds Wildcat Lake Support
Intel today released their Linux NPU Driver 1.32 as the user-space driver components that interacts with the upstream IVPU kernel accelerator driver for supporting the NPU hardware with Core Ultra processors.
Intel NPU Linux Driver To Allow Limiting Frequency For Power & Thermal Management
The Intel IVPU accelerator driver used on Linux for the neural processing unit (NPU) on Core Ultra SoCs saw a patch posted for allowing the NPU clock frequency to be limited in the name of power and thermal management.
Lastly, the most popular Intel Linux hardware reviews and benchmarks for the quarter:
Intel Arc Pro B70 Benchmarks With LLM / AI, OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan
Last month Intel announced the Arc Pro B70 with 32GB of GDDR6 video memory for this long-awaited Battlemage G31 graphics card. This new top-end Battlemage graphics card with 32 Xe cores and 32GB of GDDR6 video memory offers a lot of potential for LLM/AI and other use cases, especially when running multiple Arc Pro B70s. Last week Intel sent over four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards for Linux testing at Phoronix. Given the current re-testing for the imminent Ubuntu 26.04 release, I am still going through all of the benchmarks especially for the multi-GPU scenarios. In this article are some initial Arc Pro B70 single card benchmarks on Linux compared to other Intel Arc Graphics hardware across AI / LLM with OpenVINO and Llama.cpp, OpenCL compute benchmarks, and also some OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks. More benchmarks and the competitive compares will come as that fresh testing wraps up, but so far the Arc Pro B70 is working out rather well atop the fully open-source Linux graphics driver stack.
Running Four Intel Graphics Cards Under Linux On Ubuntu 26.04
It's been nearly one year to the week since Intel introduced Project Battlematrix as their initiative for improving their Linux driver support for the Arc Pro B-Series with enhancements such as bettering the multi-GPU support in allowing up to eight Arc Pro GPUs per system as well as other open-source driver optimizations in the era of AI. Recently with the Arc Pro B70 in having four review samples for testing I was finally able to try out the multi-GPU state of the Arc (Pro) graphics cards on Linux with their open-source driver code.
Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus Performance In 340+ Linux Benchmarks
Last month Intel began shipping the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus "Arrow Lake Refresh" desktop processor. This is a mighty interesting processor for the $349 USD price point with more cores and a larger cache compared to the Core Ultra 7 265K and capable of delivering much of the performance of the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K Arrow Lake processor. In today's article is a look at how well the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs under Linux with more than 340 different benchmarks representing a range of Linux workloads from gaming to creator to developer and technical computing uses.
Intel Arc Pro B70 Open-Source Linux Performance Against NVIDIA RTX & AMD Radeon AI PRO
Last week after receiving the Intel Arc Pro B70 review hardware I began with some benchmarks looking at how the Arc Pro B70 compared to existing Intel GPUs on Linux with their fully open-source driver stack. Today's article features the latest Arc Pro B70 benchmarks under Linux in looking at how the performance and value compares to other NVIDIA RTX and AMD Radeon (AI) PRO workstation graphics cards in the lab.
CachyOS Delivers More Performance Out Of Intel Panther Lake
Most of my Intel Panther Lake benchmarking over the past two months for the new Core Ultra Series 3 hardware has been done with Ubuntu Linux given the pervasiveness of it, especially in the corporate/enterprise space. But for those looking at achieving even greater out-of-the-box Linux performance on Intel Panther Lake, the Arch Linux based CachyOS does a pretty fine job at further advancing the performance.
Linux 7.1 Features: New NTFS Driver, New Intel + AMD Hardware, Performance Optimizations & Modernization
The Linux 7.1 development kernel that amounts to nearly 40 million lines has a lot of new features and changes in tow. While Linux 7.1 stable won't be out until mid-June, here is a look at the interesting changes coming with this next stable version of the Linux kernel.
The Intel Lunar Lake CPU Performance Gains On Linux Over The Past Year
Recently I ran benchmarks looking at the Xe2 graphics performance gains on Intel Lunar Lake over the past year with what's shipped by Ubuntu and comparing against our original tests of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition. With those Lunar Lake iGPU benchmarks out of the way, here is a look at how the Lunar Lake CPU performance has evolved on Linux since April 2025.
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus Provides Exceptional Value For Linux Users
After looking at the new Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor earlier this month with its nice performance evolution for Arrow Lake on Linux, today we are looking at the other new Intel desktop CPU offering: the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus that retails for just $219 USD.
Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake Linux Graphics Performance Up ~17% Over Past Year
Given the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release being imminent and also realizing it's been nearly one year to the day since reviewing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition laptop under Linux, I ran some fresh benchmarks for seeing how the integrated Xe2 graphics have evolved on Linux over the past year.
Intel Arc Pro B70 BMG-G31 Linux Gaming Performance
In recent weeks we have been exploring different areas of the Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics performance on Linux from various OpenCL and Vulkan to Level Zero compute benchmarks, scaling up to four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards, comparing to NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell, and other relevant tests. While not intended for gaming, many Phoronix readers keep raising requests for seeing the Arc Pro B70 performance for Linux gaming given the lack of any consumer BMG-G31 GPU. So for those curious, here is a look at the Linux gaming performance with the Arc Pro B70 graphics card.
Of nearly 100 Intel-related Linux/open-source/hardware related news articles this quarter, below is a look back at the most popular Intel news on Phoronix over the past three months. A lot has been happening from their software performance optimizations to enabling new hardware, the new Jay compiler, and more.
AMD & Intel Roll Out New Linux Updates For Today's Patch Tuesday
Today's Patch Tuesday is a busier one than normal for the quarter. Both AMD and Intel have rolled out new updates for Linux customers among other security disclosures today. Thankfully though the vulnerabilities don't appear to be too widespread or impactful.
Intel Introducing USB4STREAM Protocol For Linux - Opening Up Some Nifty Uses For USB4
An exciting Intel innovation expected to be added for the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is introducing the new USB4STREAM protocol for USB4/Thunderbolt as a "super simple" way to "basically just transfer raw packets from one host to another". This can be useful for quickly backing up a system from one host to another, sharing of web cameras or other peripherals across systems, or other environments where not having networking or wanting to avoid the traditional Linux networking stack.
Open-Source "low_latency_layer" Brings Reflex & Anti-Lag 2 To AMD & Intel GPUs On Linux
A new open-source project called low_latency_layer is an implicit Vulkan layer that enables AMD Anti-Lag 2 and NVIDIA Reflex 2 to reportedly work in a hardware-agnostic manner so that AMD and Intel graphics cards can both enjoy Reflex or Anti-Lag 2 working on non-AMD graphics cards as well.
Intel Ends Open Ecosystem Community/Evangelism, Archives Other Open-Source Projects
Over the past number of months there has been a steady flow of Intel open-source projects archived on GitHub amid the corporate restructuring at the company and realigning of their open-source focus. This week another batch of Intel open-source projects were formally archived.
KDE Plasma 6.7 Enables Overlay Planes For Intel Graphics, More Performance/Efficiency
KDE developers continued to land more feature changes for the upcoming Plasma 6.7 desktop release. It's a busy spring of fixes, optimizations, and shiny new features for Plasma 6.7.
Microsoft Announces Open-Source "Intelligent Terminal"
Microsoft today announced their newest open-source creation... Under the MIT license it's the Intelligent Terminal.
Intel Releases OpenVINO 2026.1 With Backend For Llama.cpp, New Hardware Support
Intel's OpenVINO toolkit for optimizing and deploying AI inferencing across their range of hardware platforms is out with its newest quarterly feature update. There is official support for Intel's latest hardware as well as enabling more large language models and other new AI innovations for this excellent open-source Intel software project.
Intel Compute Runtime 26.18.38308.1 Brings More Xe3P Enableement, Nova Lake P Support
Intel on Tuesday released a new version of their open-source Compute Runtime for OpenCL and Level Zero support across their integrated and discrete graphics hardware.
Many Wonderful Improvements Expected For Linux 7.1, Especially For AMD & Intel
With Linux 7.0 expected for release later today, in turn the Linux 7.1 merge window will kick off for the two week period of landing all sorts of exciting new features, changes, and removal of old features from the kernel. Here is a look at some of what is on the table for the Linux 7.1 merge window.
Linux 7.1 Released: New NTFS Driver, Intel FRED For Panther Lake, Faster Arc Graphics
Linus Torvalds just released the stable Linux 7.1 kernel and it's coming a half-day early thanks to his travel plans.
Linus Torvalds Merged The Code Beginning To Remove Intel 486 CPU Support In Linux 7.1
As a follow-up to the news first-covered on Phoronix earlier this month about Linux 7.1 expected to begin removing i486 CPU support: it indeed happened. Linus Torvalds took the initial removal bits today without any fuss today for beginning the phase out of M486 / M486SX / ELAN kernel support.
One Line x86 Change To GCC Compiler Nets +12% Benchmark Win For Modern Intel/AMD CPUs
A one line code change to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for its generic x86 tuning is benefiting modern Intel and AMD processors.
Intel Posts Fourth Version Of Cache Aware Scheduling For Linux
Just over one year ago Intel Linux engineers began working on cache-aware load balancing for Linux or more commonly referred to as Cache Aware Scheduling. The functionality for helping modern Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors especially hasn't yet been upstreamed to the Linux kernel but yesterday the fourth version of these patches were posted for review.
Intel LLM-Scaler vllm-0.14.0-b8.2 Released With Official Arc Pro B70 Support
As part of Intel's LLM-Scaler initiative for AI inferencing on Intel Arc hardware, out today is their vllm-0.14.0-b8.2 update that includes officially supporting the Arc Pro B70 graphics card.
Intel Formally Announces Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake"
Intel today formally announced the Core Series 3 low-end mobile processors previously known as Wildcat Lake. These are the new Intel 18A offerings that are a step below the Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" SoCs that began shipping earlier this year.
Intel's New Shader Compiler "Jay" Merged For Mesa 26.1
It was just a few days ago that Jay was publicly posted as the new shader compiler in-development for Intel GPUs on Linux for both their ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D drivers. While still very experimental, that initial Jay compiler code was merged today for Mesa 26.1-devel.
Many Intel & AMD Laptop Improvements Merged For Linux 7.1
As usual in recent years, there were many x86 platform driver changes merged this cycle for benefiting modern AMD Ryzen and Intel Core (Ultra) laptops. A variety of new features and laptop hardware support additions were merged for Linux 7.1.
Jay: A New Open-Source Shader Compiler Being Developed For Intel GPUs
Jay is a new open-source shader compiler being developed for Intel's open-source OpenGL and Vulkan Linux drivers. Ultimately this Jay shader compiler should help in delivering better Linux graphics performance with modern Intel hardware.
Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.32 Adds Wildcat Lake Support
Intel today released their Linux NPU Driver 1.32 as the user-space driver components that interacts with the upstream IVPU kernel accelerator driver for supporting the NPU hardware with Core Ultra processors.
Intel NPU Linux Driver To Allow Limiting Frequency For Power & Thermal Management
The Intel IVPU accelerator driver used on Linux for the neural processing unit (NPU) on Core Ultra SoCs saw a patch posted for allowing the NPU clock frequency to be limited in the name of power and thermal management.
Lastly, the most popular Intel Linux hardware reviews and benchmarks for the quarter:
Intel Arc Pro B70 Benchmarks With LLM / AI, OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan
Last month Intel announced the Arc Pro B70 with 32GB of GDDR6 video memory for this long-awaited Battlemage G31 graphics card. This new top-end Battlemage graphics card with 32 Xe cores and 32GB of GDDR6 video memory offers a lot of potential for LLM/AI and other use cases, especially when running multiple Arc Pro B70s. Last week Intel sent over four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards for Linux testing at Phoronix. Given the current re-testing for the imminent Ubuntu 26.04 release, I am still going through all of the benchmarks especially for the multi-GPU scenarios. In this article are some initial Arc Pro B70 single card benchmarks on Linux compared to other Intel Arc Graphics hardware across AI / LLM with OpenVINO and Llama.cpp, OpenCL compute benchmarks, and also some OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks. More benchmarks and the competitive compares will come as that fresh testing wraps up, but so far the Arc Pro B70 is working out rather well atop the fully open-source Linux graphics driver stack.
Running Four Intel Graphics Cards Under Linux On Ubuntu 26.04
It's been nearly one year to the week since Intel introduced Project Battlematrix as their initiative for improving their Linux driver support for the Arc Pro B-Series with enhancements such as bettering the multi-GPU support in allowing up to eight Arc Pro GPUs per system as well as other open-source driver optimizations in the era of AI. Recently with the Arc Pro B70 in having four review samples for testing I was finally able to try out the multi-GPU state of the Arc (Pro) graphics cards on Linux with their open-source driver code.
Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus Performance In 340+ Linux Benchmarks
Last month Intel began shipping the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus "Arrow Lake Refresh" desktop processor. This is a mighty interesting processor for the $349 USD price point with more cores and a larger cache compared to the Core Ultra 7 265K and capable of delivering much of the performance of the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K Arrow Lake processor. In today's article is a look at how well the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs under Linux with more than 340 different benchmarks representing a range of Linux workloads from gaming to creator to developer and technical computing uses.
Intel Arc Pro B70 Open-Source Linux Performance Against NVIDIA RTX & AMD Radeon AI PRO
Last week after receiving the Intel Arc Pro B70 review hardware I began with some benchmarks looking at how the Arc Pro B70 compared to existing Intel GPUs on Linux with their fully open-source driver stack. Today's article features the latest Arc Pro B70 benchmarks under Linux in looking at how the performance and value compares to other NVIDIA RTX and AMD Radeon (AI) PRO workstation graphics cards in the lab.
CachyOS Delivers More Performance Out Of Intel Panther Lake
Most of my Intel Panther Lake benchmarking over the past two months for the new Core Ultra Series 3 hardware has been done with Ubuntu Linux given the pervasiveness of it, especially in the corporate/enterprise space. But for those looking at achieving even greater out-of-the-box Linux performance on Intel Panther Lake, the Arch Linux based CachyOS does a pretty fine job at further advancing the performance.
Linux 7.1 Features: New NTFS Driver, New Intel + AMD Hardware, Performance Optimizations & Modernization
The Linux 7.1 development kernel that amounts to nearly 40 million lines has a lot of new features and changes in tow. While Linux 7.1 stable won't be out until mid-June, here is a look at the interesting changes coming with this next stable version of the Linux kernel.
The Intel Lunar Lake CPU Performance Gains On Linux Over The Past Year
Recently I ran benchmarks looking at the Xe2 graphics performance gains on Intel Lunar Lake over the past year with what's shipped by Ubuntu and comparing against our original tests of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition. With those Lunar Lake iGPU benchmarks out of the way, here is a look at how the Lunar Lake CPU performance has evolved on Linux since April 2025.
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus Provides Exceptional Value For Linux Users
After looking at the new Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor earlier this month with its nice performance evolution for Arrow Lake on Linux, today we are looking at the other new Intel desktop CPU offering: the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus that retails for just $219 USD.
Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake Linux Graphics Performance Up ~17% Over Past Year
Given the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release being imminent and also realizing it's been nearly one year to the day since reviewing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition laptop under Linux, I ran some fresh benchmarks for seeing how the integrated Xe2 graphics have evolved on Linux over the past year.
Intel Arc Pro B70 BMG-G31 Linux Gaming Performance
In recent weeks we have been exploring different areas of the Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics performance on Linux from various OpenCL and Vulkan to Level Zero compute benchmarks, scaling up to four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards, comparing to NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell, and other relevant tests. While not intended for gaming, many Phoronix readers keep raising requests for seeing the Arc Pro B70 performance for Linux gaming given the lack of any consumer BMG-G31 GPU. So for those curious, here is a look at the Linux gaming performance with the Arc Pro B70 graphics card.