Google Sends Patches For AMD Zen / Zen 2 RAPL PowerCap Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Google Sends Patches For AMD Zen / Zen 2 RAPL PowerCap Support

Building off the work sent out by Google engineers in recent months and merged for Linux 5.8 around RAPL support for AMD Zen / Zen 2 CPUs with supporting the "runtime average power limiting" counters on Linux similar to Intel's longstanding support, that work has continued now with Zen RAPL support in the PowerCap driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Google-Zen-RAPL-PowerCap

[Jumbotron]

I imagine some of this had to do with a lot more AMD APUs coming to market in Google Chromebooks. Particularly Renoir based Chromebooks. The first gen AMD APUs were simply Bristol Ridge/Stoney Ridge Excavator models with Volcanic/Pirate Islands iGPUs.

Good thing Google has done this now for AMD seeing as both Intel AND AMD are going to have some real competition in the Chromebook space when a whole host of Chromebook models will come with Mediatek's upcoming MT-8192 ARM based SoC. These SoCs will be based on 2-4 ARM Cortex A-76 big cores and 2-4 Cortex A-55 little cores. These are the ARM cores that power Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 SoCs that you find now in phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S10, LG's G8 ThinQ and ASUS ROG phone. This Cortex A76-A55 combo is also the basis for Microsoft's home grown SoC. If some of these Chromebooks also have 5G as well then we are looking at the newly released Mediatek Dimensity 720 which has 4 ARM Cortex A76 and 4 Cortex A55 cores and 5G along with a multi-core A.I. unit like Qualcomm's Hexagon core.

Devices with ARM Cortex A76 cores and configured like the Snapdragon 855 are said to compete directly with Intel Kaby Lake in performance but destroys Kaby Lake in power draw and battery life. I doubt AMD's Renoir can compete on the power draw and battery life without giving up much if not most of its performance advantage over either Intel or ARM.

[starshipeleven]

Devices with ARM Cortex A76 cores and configured like the Snapdragon 855 are said to compete directly with Intel Kaby Lake in performance but destroys Kaby Lake in power draw and battery life.

^he is talking of laptop parts, not desktop CPUs

[boxie]

I for one am looking forward to being able to play with this!