Intel i9-12900K Alder Lake Linux Performance In Different P/E Core Configurations

[perpetually high]

Two weeks ago I threw Debian out and put Windows 11 on it. The difference in performance is immediately noticeable.

That's because you are a Linux newbie and have no idea what you are doing. Not a Linux problem. That's a Sonadow/birdie/whatever-your-other-usernames-are problem.

[mdedetrich]

And yet Alder Lake performs much better on Windows than it does in Linux.

This may be true but it doesn't have anything to do with the scheduler because Windows 10 (which doesn't have the new scheduler specifically for Alder lake) also beats Linux, this seems to be more due to processor support

Intel is not trying to provide an "automagic" solution.

Developers can still choose to directly schedule workloads onto each processor type (or ideally affinity hint the OS as to what the workload type is), see this:
"However, it may be more optimal to run background worker threads on the Efficient-cores. The API references in the next section lists many of the functions available, ranging from those providing OS level guidance through weak affinity hits, such as SetThreadIdealProcessor() and SetThreadPriority(), through stronger control like SetThreadInformation() and SetThreadSelectedCPUSets(), to the strongest control of affinity using SetThreadAffinityMask()."

The idea is that both the software and the hardware (Thread Director) are providing hints to the OS (Windows in this case) and the Windows scheduler matches up the workload to the right core, Intel isn't forcing any sort of automagic scheduling (again Thread Director only gives hints to the OS about the current state of the cores).

See the diagram and description in this section: "Intel® Thread Director and Operating System Vendor (OSV) Optimizations for the Performance Hybrid Architecture"

And again to reiterate, a developer can also still choose hard affinities if they want "through stronger control like SetThreadInformation() and SetThreadSelectedCPUSets(), to the strongest control of affinity using SetThreadAffinityMask()".

All of the quotes are from this intel developer guide: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...per-guide.html

I actually don't disagree with this, my point is precisely that to get any real measurable result you DO need to use affinity hint for the OS. The issue is that Intel has been pushing the idea that the scheduler will solve this issues without requiring the processor affinity which is what I am calling snake oil.

Its also an obvious difficult problem because programs have to be coded specifically to take advantage of the affinity hints, hence why its not surprising that Intel is pushing this because they don't want to admit its a lot of work to get tangible benefit out of it/

[MadCatX]

I have been running Debian with a custom-built kernel and Mesa on my Apollo Lake Atom laptop for the last three years.
Two weeks ago I threw Debian out and put Windows 11 on it. The difference in performance is immediately noticeable. Web browsers and other heavy applications like productivity suites no longer randomly stall for a minute when scrolling through >20 tabs or multiple pages in a docx file loaded with lots of images, photos and tables.

That sounds like an OOM problem that the multigeneration LRU patches might alleviate. Did you try that?

[Sonadow]

That's because you are a Linux newbie and have no idea what you are doing. Not a Linux problem. That's a Sonadow/birdie/whatever-your-other-usernames-are problem.

Amazing that the person who said he never wanted to quote me again decided to quote and comment on my post. What credibility.

And unlike a certain person who claims to be a power luser and an 'enthusiast' yet doesn't even know how to compile the X server, Mesa or a web browser and its dependencies and only has enough intelligence to use prebuilt binaries, I have been building my own kernels and drivers and recompiling the applications I use on Linux for the past 13 years for maximum optimization.

[Sonadow]

That sounds like an OOM problem that the multigeneration LRU patches might alleviate. Did you try that?

It's not an OOM problem at all. The laptop has access to 8GB of memory and 4GB of swap, and even when the applications were stalling free never reports more than 5GB in use at any time. And it was a 5.15 kernel, not the dinosaur 5.10 kernel that got bundled with Bullseye.

Lastly, I never perform in-place upgrades. The upgrade from Buster to Bullseye was done with a full format and install with Debian's netinst image.

[perpetually high]

And unlike a certain person who claims to be a power luser and an 'enthusiast' yet doesn't even know how to compile the X server, Mesa or a web browser and its dependencies and only has enough intelligence to use prebuilt binaries, I have been building my own kernels and drivers and recompiling the applications I use on Linux for the past 13 years for maximum optimization.

Because I don't *need* to compile the X server. LOL! This is what I meant when you guys are doing all that extra shit just to say you can do it, with no real performance impact to show for it. Bravo?

And what skill does it take to compile? Are you even writing the code? That's where the complexity is. Not figuring out how to compile it. I really just have no respect for you or your existence. Take the best of care. I decided to quote you to expose you, because you are a sham and a fraud. Having said that, take the best of care. And do way, way better.

[Grinness]

Right, because you have nothing to argue?

Fact remains that for all the benchmarks Michael has done about Linux having better performance over Windows, they simply don't carry forward to real-world computing. Till now nobody can provide a reasonable explanation as to why Windows boots, launches programs and generally respond to application inputs faster than Linux on the same hardware, especially on low-power hardware like Atoms.

????

They do not carry over .... uhm, then why are you here commenting/reading benchmark articles? move on, nothing of interest for you
Go and buy whatever cpu you want/you get hooked to.

[Sonadow]

This may be true but it doesn't have anything to do with the scheduler because Windows 10 (which doesn't have the new scheduler specifically for Alder lake) also beats Linux, this seems to be more due to processor support

Which was the point I was trying to make. Windows 10 does not have a scheduler specially for Alder Lake but they have experience on BIG.little architectures because of their work on Windows RT and the ARM64 versions of WIndows 10, where all hardware use BIG.little. It's practically a forgone conclusion that this experience factored into their continuous work on the scheduler to the point where Windows 10 for x64 is able to handle Alder Lake as-is.

[Sonadow]

And what skill does it take to compile?.

Typical remark of someone who has never done so and assumes that takes no skill. Go ahead, build something big like LibreOffice and see everything for yourself. You aren't going to even get past the first compiler error because you don't have the knowledge to do so.

And try telling Gentoo users that compiling their stuff is pointless. Go right ahead. You have shown nothing except your own ignorance and incompetence outside of building a kernel and running pretty benchmarks. Some 'enthusiast'.

[Anux]

I have been running Debian with a custom-built kernel and Mesa on my Apollo Lake Atom laptop for the last three years.
Two weeks ago I threw Debian out and put Windows 11 on it. The difference in performance is immediately noticeable. Web browsers and other heavy applications like productivity suites no longer randomly stall for a minute when scrolling through >20 tabs or multiple pages in a docx file loaded with lots of images, photos and tables.

Maybe that was a Debian problem or an I/O-sheduler problem? Especially old Hardware runs generally smoother on Linux (provided there is proper GPU support, but my Debian times are long gone and I can only speak vor Arch Linux.