Clear Linux Switches From ACPI CPUFreq To P-State

Intel's Clear Linux distribution has switched from using the ACPI CPUFreq scaling driver for recent generations of Intel hardware to now using the P-State CPU frequency scaling driver.

Intel's P-State driver has been around since the Sandy Bridge days, but the results have been mixed with sometimes P-State working out well for conserving power use but not necessarily delivering expected performance. Linux gamers, server administrators, and others have generally long avoided P-State. While many Linux distributions have been defaulting to P-State for years, Clear Linux has been one of the few still preferring to use CPUFreq for delivering the best out-of-the-box experience (and performance).

As a sign though of P-State's maturing in recent kernel releases, they are now defaulting to P-State. Those running Clear Linux on newer Intel hardware will find P-State is used in place of CPUFreq while "performance" is the default governor choice.

Great to see this happen and a further indication of P-State finally getting into shape. My tests of P-State on recent Linux kernel releases have been in good shape while there is more P-State tweaking and improvements slated for Linux 4.12.

Stay tuned for benchmarks. Clear Linux as of today is on Linux 4.10.9, GCC 6.3.0, LLVM Clang 3.9.1, Mesa 17.1-dev, X.Org Server 1.19, and Beignet 1.4.