Canonical has started shipping separate package options for Ubuntu 25.10 with executable files compiled with architecture optimizations x86-64-v3. There are currently around 2000 packages available for x86-64-v3 from the main repository, providing enthusiasts with the option to achieve maximum performance. Although these packages have not undergone the same level of testing as the main packages, they are already usable.
In Ubuntu 26.04, the plan is to gather versions of all available packages optimized for the x86-64-v3 architecture and subject them to comprehensive testing. The implementation of using packages with optimizations for x86-64-v3 does not disrupt support for older hardware. Changes have been made to dpkg, apt, and Launchpad to enable building and distributing packages simultaneously for various x86-64 architectures.
To determine if a system supports the x86-64-v3 architecture, users can configure the repository and install the appropriate packages using the following commands:
- $ ld.so –help | grep ‘-v[0-9]’
- x86-64-v4 (supported, searched)
- x86-64-v3 (supported, searched)
- x86-64-v2 (supported, searched)
- echo ‘APT::Architecture-Variants “amd64v3”;’ | sudo tee /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99enable-amd64v3
- sudo apt update
- sudo apt upgrade
The x86-64-v* versions serve as a way to identify microarchitecture state slices encompassing specific sets of extensions. The x86-64-v3 microarchitecture, in use since around 2015 in Intel processors starting with Intel Haswell, features extensions such as AVX, AVX2, BMI2, FMA, LZCNT, MOVBE, and SXSAVE. On the other hand, the x86-64-v2 version includes extensions like SSE3, SSE4_2, SSSE3, POPCNT, LAHF-SAHF, and CMPXCHG16B. Lastly, the x86-64-v4 version covers extensions like AVX512F, AVX512BW, AVX512CD, AVX512DQ, and AVX512VL.
In general, the performance boost from compiling with optimizations for the x86-64-v3 architecture is modest, around 1%. However, in specific scenarios, especially in applications that involve extensive calculations, a more significant performance