Canonical Experimenting With x86-64-v3 Packages For Ubuntu 26.10

Source Domain: www.phoronix.com

Canonical engineers are again evaluating the impact of building the Ubuntu Linux archive for the x86-64-v3 “amd64v3” micro-architecture feature level for its performance benefits on modern Intel and AMD systems. An amd64v3 archive is available of Ubuntu 26.10 for testing with the packages targeting this level that allows for AVX/AVX2 and other newer CPU x86_64 ISA capabilities of the past decade.

Canonical the past few release cycles have experimented with x86_64-v3 packages for better performance. In building for x86-64-v3 you can then assume AVX/AVX2, FMA, BMI1/BMI2, MOVBE, and other newer ISA capabilities. But to run the binaries you must be using Intel Haswell CPUs or AMD Excavator and newer. Roughly the Intel and AMD CPUs of the past decade.

Red Hat already made RHEL 10 target x86_64-v3 and distributions like CachyOS offer x86_64-v3 packages. Canonical hasn’t officially introduced a supported solution but they have offered x86_64-v3/amd64v3 package archives for testing.

A Phoronix reader wrote in to note that there is now an amd64v3 archive for Ubuntu 26.10, the Stonking Stingray. The conventional amd64 archive remains available and the amd64v3 archive isn’t currently enabled by default on capable systems or anything along those lines, but it’s available for those running Ubuntu 26.10 development builds and want to test the performance impact of these latest packages built for this newer x86_64 baseline.

I’ll be running some benchmarks soon, meanwhile we’ll see if for Ubuntu 26.10 there is any official change in status of their amd64v3 packages. Ubuntu 26.10 is shaping up to be a usual, post-LTS busy cycle with Canonical also pursuing a context-aware desktop with on-device speech-to-text and other new features.

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