ARM's big.LITTLE Energy Aware Scheduling Support Has Been Sent In For Linux 4.21
Energy Aware Scheduling has been in the works for a while and has taken quite some time to get this kernel scheduler code into a state where the developers are happy with including it upstream, but that looks like it will happen for 4.21 as Ingo Molnar already staged it as part of his scheduler changes he has submitted for this kernel merge window.
Energy Aware Scheduling (EAS) makes the scheduler aware of systems with asymmetric CPU topologies and in this original case of the developers to accommodate the ARM Energy Model framework for big.LITTLE SoCs where not all of the cores are the same power.
This scheduling rework allows the scheduler to make wiser decisions based upon the topology of the CPU cores with its power and performance characteristics. EAS on ARM big.LITTLE SoCs has been able to not only help with reducing power usage but also increase performance by a percent or two.
The thousand plus lines of new Linux scheduler code is now queued and will be part of Linux 4.21 assuming Linus has no last minute objections.
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