ARM's big.LITTLE Energy Aware Scheduling Support Has Been Sent In For Linux 4.21

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 26 December 2018 at 12:08 AM EST. Add A Comment
LINUX KERNEL
While already in use by Android's version of the Linux kernel, the ARM-developed Energy Aware Scheduling support is set to finally be mainlined for the Linux 4.21 kernel.

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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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.

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