2 ms·
Yes, Linux is aware of asymmetric cores and can schedule more efficiently. big.LITTLE core architectures are more common in ARM systems, so Linux developed that
by tremon 3y ago
Yes, Linux is aware of asymmetric cores and can schedule more efficiently. big.LITTLE core architectures are more common in ARM systems, so Linux developed that support over ten years ago: https://lwn.net/Articles/501501/ https://lwn.net/Articles/501501/
The official documentation is at https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/scheduler/sched-energy.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/scheduler/sched-energ... . I don't know if the kernel already has an energy model that can apply to the Zen4/Zen4c cores, probably the model/instrumention must be explicitly added.
- Aardwolf 3y agoHow is Linux aware of this, are there CPU id instructions to differentiate the Zen4 from the Zen4c cores? If yes, is there any reason Windows can't receive a patch to be able to do so?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- smoldesu 3y agoI am not an expert, but I believe it still requires some manufacturer effort on Linux. I bought an Alder Lake system pretty close to launch, and I had to wait a few months for kernel-side Thread Director[0] to fix asymmetric scheduling. Performance was really janky before that update, even though the power consumption and iGPU seemed fine. Nowadays things are fine, though I'm not sure how much of the asymmetric support was already in the kernel. > is there any reason Windows can't receive a patch to be able to do so? Probably not, given that Thread Director also runs on Windows AFAIK. AMD could probably cook up a solution if they needed one, but their E cores look pretty powerful from the get-go. My guess is that it won't need such a huge patch to perform well. [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-thread-director-coming-to-linux-5-18 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-thread-director-comi...