Linux Still Working On Power-Aware Scheduling

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 11 October 2013 at 03:54 PM EDT. 1 Comment
HARDWARE
ARM and other Linux stakeholders are still working to bring power-aware scheduling to the kernel.

Back in July an ARM developer presented a power-aware scheduler for the Linux kernel. The focus of this work is to deliver power-efficient performance on Linux by having a power scheduler live next to the kernel's process scheduler for monitoring CPU loads and better coordinating power policy and scheduler decisions.

After three months, Morten Rasmussen of ARM today published the second revision to the power-aware scheduling patches. The proposal was discussed last month at the Linux Plumbers' Conference and the design revised to provide a high-level power driver interface.

This interface then allows the scheduler to query the power driver for information to guide its power management decisions. The power driver intends to be unified and eventually replace cpufreq and cpuidle drivers while also allowing platforms to implement their own policies as part of the power drivers.

More information on the power-aware scheduler work along with the seven new patches can be found on the Linux kernel mailing list.
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