Intel Posts Patch For Fixing/Boosting Lunar Lake Linux Performance On ASUS Laptops

Since purchasing an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 "Lunar Lake" laptop for Linux testing last month, the performance has been coming in below expectations. Among the tests were finding Xe2 graphics on Lunar Lake performing slower that under Windows 11 and in comparison slower than Meteor Lake graphics on Linux. Intel engineers have been able to reproduce my original findings and they uncovered the culprit is a new ASUS laptop feature called AIPT. In turn a patch was posted today for supporting ASUS AIPT controls under Linux to fix this low Lunar Lake Linux performance.

Intel engineer Srinivas Pandruvada posted the Sunday patch for the ASUS WMI driver to allow setting the AIPT modes. Pandruvada explains with the patch:

Some recent Asus laptops are supporting ASUS Intelligent Performance Technology (AIPT). This solution allows users to have maximized CPU performance in models with a chassis providing more thermal head room.

There are major performance issues when Linux is installed on these laptops compared to Windows install. One such report is published for Graphics benchmarks on Asus ASUS Zenbook S 14 with Lunar Lake processors.

By default, these laptops are booting in "Whisper Mode" till OS power management or tools change this to other AIPT mode. This "Whisper" mode calls to set lower maximum and minimum RAPL (Running Average Power Limit) via thermal tables. On Linux this leads to lower performance even when platform power profile is "balanced". This "Whisper" mode should correspond to "quiet" mode.

So, when AIPT is present change the default mode to "Standard" during boot. Map the three platform power profile modes as follows:

Power Profile Mode AIPT mode
-----------------------------------
quiet Whisper
balanced Standard
performance Performance
------------------------------------

So in turn with AIPT support in the ASUS WMI Linux driver, the ASUS Lunar Lake laptops won't end up being stuck in the "whisper" low-power mode.

AIPT is short for ASUS Intelligent Performance Technology. Those wanting to learn more about it can do so via ASUS.com. Things went awry with ASUS not enabling AIPT controls under Linux themselves and the default AIPT behavior to being whisper mode.

For the ASUS Zenbook S 14 with Intel Core Ultra 256V Lunar Lake processor, I'll be building a patched Linux kernel build today and beginning to carry out new benchmarks... All of my Lunar Lake benchmarks continue to be done on the ASUS Zenbook S 14 X5406SA-S14.U71TB model that I purchased myself just for Linux compatibility testing and benchmarking for lack of any review samples otherwise... But at least in doing so, was able to get the spotlight shining on this Lunar Lake issue now known to be affecting ASUS laptops. Stay tuned for new Intel Lunar Lake Linux benchmarks of power/performance in the coming days.

If all goes well, hopefully this patch will get picked up for the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel cycle.