AMD Core Performance Boost Patches Posted For P-State Linux Driver

While not quite as exciting as yesterday's AMD XDNA driver publishing for Ryzen AI on Linux, a notable patch series out of AMD today on the Linux front is enabling AMD Core Performance Boost controls within their P-State CPU frequency scaling driver.

This patch series is about allowing Core Performance Boost to be controlled when using their modern AMD P-State driver on Zen 2/3/4 Linux systems. Via a new sysfs interface at /sys/devices/system/cpu/amd_pstate/cpb_boost, it's possible to toggle Core Performance Boost in real-time within Linux -- rather than being limited to rebooting and toggling it from the BIOS.

Core Performance Boost is for allowing the AMD CPUs to operate within their turbo/boost frequency range. Most users will want to keep Core Performance Boost (Turbo Core) enabled, but those wanting to dynamically reduce/limit their processor power consumption will be able to toggle the support with these pending driver patches.

Writing "1" to /sys/devices/system/cpu/amd_pstate/cpb_boost will enable Core Performance Boost (CPB) on supported Ryzen CPUs while a value of "0" will disable the feature. Reading the file can be used for finding out if CPB is active on your system. These patches stem from this bug report requesting the CPU frequency / boost control support for the amd-pstate driver.

Those interested in this support can find the Core Performance Boost patches on the mailing list going through review. If all goes well this work could find its way to the Linux v6.9 kernel in the summer. Another feature for AMD P-State on Linux still working its way to the kernel is the P-State Preferred Core handling... Here's hoping both patch series will be ready in time for the next kernel cycle.