Linux 6.14 to Reduce Power Consumption for Ryzen CPUs as AMD Submits Patches Ahead of Merge Window
AMD has been working to ensure its Ryzen chips can offer Windows-equivalent performance on Linux-based operating systems as well. The latest improvement for Linux will now focus on managing the power consumption by the processor. To ensure this, AMD has completed all the required steps for the Linux 6.14 kernel, ensuring that the changes can be made live soon.
AMD developers have been actively working to deploy the “balanced_performance” mode for the Ryzen processors, which will be the default setting after the newest patch is applied to Linux 6.14. Through AMD P-State driver improvements, AMD could enhance the power efficiency of its processors by setting a different EPP Policy(Energy Performance Preference). This fixes the bug that was found in the “performance” mode as was seen in the patch notes.
AMD’s Linux engineer Mario Limonciello’s patch comments
"For Ryzen systems the EPP policy set by the BIOS is generally configured to performance as this is the default register value for the CPPC request MSR.
If a user doesn't use additional software to configure EPP then the system will default biased towards performance and consume extra battery. Instead configure the default to "balanced_performance" for this case."
The AMD P-state driver is responsible for managing the power states of Ryzen and EPYC processors and the EPP is responsible for influencing it. By default, the EPP policy sets the Ryzen-based systems to “performance” mode, which consumes more power even in light tasks. For instance, if a user watches a YouTube video, the Performance mode may consume up to 14W if the CPU runs at, let’s say 5.0 GHz. With the same CPU, the power consumption can be brought down to just 7W if the frequency is reduced to 3.0 GHz while having a negligible effect on the performance.
The new Linux patch will change the default EPP from “Performance” to “balanced_performance” mode but for EPYC processors, the “Performance” mode will be retained due to higher load requirements. Since the implementation has already commenced, the patch will be enabled with the Linux 6.14 when the merge window opens in January.
