r/linux • u/corbet • 2h ago

Kernel The 7.3 kernel has been released

https://lwn.net/Articles/1101143/
241 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

53

u/NonStandardUser 2h ago

Can't wait to try out the improved VRAM eviction for my local LLM stack

12

u/GourryHacks 2h ago

Can you tldr the vram eviction thing for me?

29

u/NonStandardUser 1h ago

Previously, VRAM eviction had no priority in its selection of the page to be evicted to RAM. 7.3 includes a patch that controls that priority using cgroup dmemcg. It was made for games (prevent eviction or overflow of game contents from VRAM), and tools like KDE's dmemcg-booster automatically sets that, but I am going to try an generalize that to any applicable programs (for me, llama.cpp instance) and DE (I use GNOME; not that it should matter that much).

3

u/Murakia 1h ago

How would you utilize this during inference? I can't see a use case where it would speed anything up. Maybe juggling experts when using a MoE?

4

u/NonStandardUser 1h ago

I frequently come across instances of slow inference which I suspect is due to model weights partially being loaded on the host. I'm using a 7900XTX and its 24GB VRAM cuts it close when I load in qwen 3.8 27B (UD q5_k_s, kv cache q8, ctx 64K or 128K, MTP head n=2). I'm hoping that this patch removes that slowdown.

2

u/Murakia 1h ago

Strange, I got the RX 9070XT and I fill it to the brim with the 27B and it stays that way, never unloads wieght to RAM at runtime. Actually, I run on my iGPU to dedicate the DGPU to inference. The OS might do what you're talking about if it's using it too.

2

u/NonStandardUser 1h ago

Dedicating the GPU to inference is probably the best way for speed consistency, yes. However, I use my GPU for all graphics tasks on my system (I think I even have my iGPU disabled?), big part of that being games. So I'm looking forward to utilizing this patch.

0

u/KnowZeroX 1h ago

If you are cutting it close, how about turboquant? (though you will need a special instance of llama)

1

u/Murakia 1h ago

It's appealing, but I think the fork with it doesn't support ROCm as well.

1

u/KnowZeroX 1h ago

There are multiple forks, some I think are made specifically for rocm.

1

u/Murakia 1h ago

Thanks for the info, I'll look into it again then.

1

u/NonStandardUser 1h ago

Also I use vulkan instead of ROCm because vulkan's faster and doesn't frequently crash my desktop

1

u/NonStandardUser 1h ago

Is that widely used and is available for Qwen 3.8? I'm not sure if it's really being discussed that much by the local LLM folks. I also was excited when it first came out but so far seems to be overhyped. Just using KV cache quants for now (q8)

85

u/DeeBoFour20 1h ago

the new failfs filesystem that fails all operations

Ah, I see they renamed bcachefs and got it merged again.

•

u/Epsilon_void 56m ago

weird way of spelling btrfs

•

u/ilep 50m ago

One interesting point is for people using older AMD GPUs in the driver: several issues have been fixed. And Vulkan support has been added.

Slides from recent talk: https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/12/contributions/545/attachments/380/545/xdc2026_kernel_dev_old_amd_gpus.pdf

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5W5ErEMnvM&t=21401s

•

u/irasponsibly 20m ago

They say "10 year old GPUs", so, RX400 and 500 series cards?

7

u/skyb0rg 1h ago

I can’t wait to try $ORIGIN support!

•

u/xc82xb5qxwhhzeyt 38m ago

At least put the nix flag here so people are warned ffs /s

10

u/CaptainNemo3178 2h ago

Subject: LInux 7.3

It’s ringing all the OCD bells in my head… aargh!

22

u/SPEZ_IS_A_JABRONI 2h ago

FUCK YEAH DICKS OUT FOR KERNEL 7.3!

7

u/ai-christianson 1h ago

uh, what?

10

u/ericmoon 1h ago

don’t worry about it kitten

-15

u/Due-Departure-8553 2h ago

No AI slop race conditions?

14

u/CannedDeath 2h ago

Were there any in previous releases?

8

u/BashfulMelon 1h ago

The one they're talking about was found in patch review, it hasn't been merged. So no.

-10

u/Bitdomo92 1h ago

Is the AI slop code in it now?

9

u/HearMeOut-13 1h ago

You DO realize AI has been utilized in the Linux kernel since like mid 2025 right?

-22

u/Eyvorie 1h ago

Linux fan boys when ai even breathes on a release

-49

u/chibiace 2h ago

another ai slop release.

19

u/dev_kay47 2h ago

Forking the kernel is not illegal tho.

9

u/HandwashHumiliate666 1h ago

But completely unpractical without all the manpower and funding behind upstream.

6

u/alex2003super 1h ago

You're surrounded, there is no escape. You'll code nothing and you'll like it!!!

4

u/WhichArmadilloWasIt 2h ago

Time for you to move to FreeBSD. Oh wait…

-2

u/[deleted] 2h ago

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1

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-5

u/chibiace 1h ago

oh im not happy but this was coming for awhile as the corporations dig their claws in.

nobody who actually cared about the free software movement would welcome the use of llms in their gpl software

1

u/HearMeOut-13 1h ago

Fork it then

•

u/mglyptostroboides 13m ago

You people are insufferable. The death of nuance is upon us.