Linux 5.9 Adding New Knob To Control Default Boost Value For Real-Time Workloads

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.9 Adding New Knob To Control Default Boost Value For Real-Time Workloads

Primarily driven currently by Arm big.LITTLE use-cases like high-end smartphones where you may be running on battery and not want to boost the CPU performance too high for real-time (RT) tasks, Linux 5.9 is adding new capabilities around setting the default boost value...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.9-Sched-Clamp-RT-Min

[herman]

I'm convinced ARM is the future. Good to see Linux is keeping up with this.

[nranger]

Indeed. Linux has benefited from being both portable and scalable. Things like power-aware scheduling from the ARM world, NUMA from data center, eventually features or tunables for the very small or the very big systems end up pooling in the middle for desktop users.

Regarding ARM, we will certainly see in the next 18 months if they make a push on the desktop on the backs of Apple. More competitors are a good thing, both for the new opportunities those products offer, and hopefully also a push for AMD and Intel to work together (at least a little) to keep x86 relevant.

[starshipeleven]

I'm convinced ARM is the future. Good to see Linux is keeping up with this.

Of course it is keeping up with ARM development, it's the default (and only) kernel for most ARM systems.

[starshipeleven]

hopefully also a push for AMD and Intel to work together (at least a little) to keep x86 relevant.

I would be more interested in ARM dusting off their old ARM APU plans.
That's probably our only chance of seeing decent ARM consumer devices with UEFI support in this decade.

[skeevy420]

I would be more interested in ARM dusting off their old ARM APU plans.
That's probably our only chance of seeing decent ARM consumer devices with UEFI support in this decade.

Do you mean AMD there?

It sucks Skybridge never amounted to anything. Something like that in an APU would have a lot of potential and could be a real game changer.

[starshipeleven]

Do you mean AMD there?

Yeah, I'm dumb.

It sucks Skybridge never amounted to anything.

To be fair, at the time AMD wasn't in the position to fuck around, so it's kind of expected that the project was dropped.

[skeevy420]

To be fair, at the time AMD wasn't in the position to fuck around, so it's kind of expected that the project was dropped.

But now they are so it'll be interesting to see if they revive it, especially with Intel now dabbling in mixed x86_64 cores like ARM does.

I'm actually a bit surprised the upcoming game consoles aren't using something like Skybridge. Use the ARM cores to run the OS and apps like Netflix and use the x86_64 cores to run games. My biggest issue I have with the PS4 is hearing the cooling fans kick in when nothing but Netflix and other streaming services are in use -- using ARM over x86_64 for the OS and apps should fix that.

[starshipeleven]

I'm actually a bit surprised the upcoming game consoles aren't using something like Skybridge. Use the ARM cores to run the OS and apps like Netflix and use the x86_64 cores to run games. My biggest issue I have with the PS4 is hearing the cooling fans kick in when nothing but Netflix and other streaming services are in use -- using ARM over x86_64 for the OS and apps should fix that.

Why adding a whole new CPU with all that complexity (or even a big.LITTLE x86 setup) when you can just shut down cores?
I really doubt a couple cores of a PS4 would consume more than a whole ARM SoC, and that's plenty CPU to just run the GUI and feed the media stream to hardware accelerators.

Linux can disable CPU cores since ages ago https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...essor-on-linux and some smartphone CPU schedulers (like "hotplug") will also shut down cores dynamically depending on demand.

Now can FreeBSD do this? Checkmate, BSD fans.

[AmericanLocomotive]

But now they are so it'll be interesting to see if they revive it, especially with Intel now dabbling in mixed x86_64 cores like ARM does.

I'm actually a bit surprised the upcoming game consoles aren't using something like Skybridge. Use the ARM cores to run the OS and apps like Netflix and use the x86_64 cores to run games. My biggest issue I have with the PS4 is hearing the cooling fans kick in when nothing but Netflix and other streaming services are in use -- using ARM over x86_64 for the OS and apps should fix that.

I mean a PS4 is also using a ~10 year old CPU core on 28nm. It's using a not-insignificant amount of available CPU resources just to stream and decode 1080p video. My modern Ryzen 3900X isn't even slightly phased by software 1080p decode.

Most ARM devices also aren't even using the ARM core(s) to do any streaming/decode. Those SoC almost always have a dedicated hardware video decode block that does most of the heavy lifting. The PS4 also has hardware video decode, but it may not be compatible with Netflix's codec (so they fall back to a software mode) or the decoder may just not be very power efficient.