Clear Linux Switches From ACPI CPUFreq To P-State

Written by Michael Larabel in Clear Linux on 12 April 2017 at 07:56 PM EDT. 3 Comments
CLEAR LINUX
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.
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week