This simple AMD fix can make Linux much faster
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Linux machines have been plagued with Windows-centric hardware management since 2002, but this could change.
Sophisticated interfaces between a machine’s operating system and its hardware, such as the chips that slow down your Linux machine, have long been necessary to ensure processors with billions of transistors remain efficient.
Although the latest ACPI standard replaced the outgoing APM standard in 1996, even more than a quarter of a century ago, it still had one major flaw.
Slower performance
Computer engineers run most of their testing on the industry-standard operating system, which has long been Windows, making Linux distributions and macOS mostly unthinkable when using third-party chips like AMD processors.
With the introduction of its own silicon, Apple has found a way to improve overall performance with the processors it uses in its computers. The company’s M-series chips are now in their second generation, although this is a costly solution that is simply out of reach for the Linux Foundation.
Linux poor performance
The report continues to reminisce about Linux maker Linus Torvalds’ thoughts on the updated ACPI standard, when he said in 2003:
“ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we’re kind of stuck with it. If Intel people are listening to this and you’ve had something to do with ACPI, shoot yourself before you procreate.”
The issue surfaced when troubled machines took some time to respond to STPCLK# signals, which determine whether a core should be idle. This reduced energy efficiency, introducing some dummy I/O instructions as a workaround.
While this is no longer a problem, AMD engineer K Prateek Nayak found that Linux machines still follow the dummy instructions on his company’s processors. In the meantime, The Register reports a “hurried patch” from Intel’s Dave Hansen, limiting the workaround to only being present on Intel chips, which will be unaffected by the different method they use for idling a core. As a result, the minimum throughput would have increased by about 14 times, and the average throughput would also have increased by a little more than half.
Ultimately, even as we head into the 2020s, much of the third-party hardware we see on the market is primarily developed with Windows in mind, and it’s likely that eagle-eyed engineers’ tweaks will continue to drive improvements for less popular operating systems as time progresses.
Through The register (opens in new tab)