AMD Developing New Heterogeneous CPU Core Driver For Linux Systems

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Developing New Heterogeneous CPU Core Driver For Linux Systems

AMD for months has already been working on heterogeneous core topology optimizations for Linux within the AMD P-State CPUFreq driver and other heterogeneous CPU topology improvements for dealing with Ryzen systems sporting a mix of "classic" (full) cores with the denser "C" cores. Today though they've announced a brand new "Heterogeneous Core Driver" for further enhancing Linux support for AMD platforms sporting a combination of core types...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Heterogeneous-Core-Driver

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

I assume big / little cores and their corresponding frequency differences aren't the only thing this will look at, and whether or not the cores are on a fat stack of v-cache is part of the data the scheduler can optimize for?

[Anux]

I assume big / little cores and their corresponding frequency differences aren't the only thing this will look at, and whether or not the cores are on a fat stack of v-cache is part of the data the scheduler can optimize for?

Yes I would assume that cache size will play a role in the decision process since normal and C cores have already different cache sizes that will have impact on memory intensive workloads.

[Jumbotron]

Yes I would assume that cache size will play a role in the decision process since normal and C cores have already different cache sizes that will have impact on memory intensive workloads.

Let me jump in and state I like both of your thoughts on this and so I will add this to the mix….would this new driver by AMD also take into account non-CPU states seeing as how the whole idea of heterogeneous computing takes into account things like DSP’s, FPGA’s, NPU’s, DPU’s and of course most certainly GPU’s particularly those that are integrated on the CPU die but even discreet GPU’s over the bus ? Perhaps not at first for this driver but going forward ? Or is there now or will there be a concurrent driver that supports the scenario I laid out above ?

[Anux]

This is a pure CPU scheduler.