ONGOING DEVELOPMENT
L inus Torvalds announced Linux 5.16-rc5, noting that it had been “a bit bigger than usual” but attributing this to “people trying to get stuff done before the holidays”. The forthcoming kernel will add support for Intel’s “AMX” (Advanced Matrix Extensions), RISC-V virtual machines, and a wealth of new graphics including the integrated graphics on Intel Alder Lake platforms. Deep in the new kernel, the default amount of memory that applications can “lock” into place (prevent being swapped) has been upped to 8MB but this has led to debate about the relative tradeoffs involved.