Zhaoxin also prepares code for preferred CPU cores
For Intel and AMD processors, it’s been true for years that some CPU cores on silicon are better than others, so Linux is laced with code that can work with this and make better use of the preferred cores. China’s Zhaoxin (the successor to the x86 VIA) is designing a similar thing for its CPU cores, cores that are typically capable of reaching higher operating frequencies without problems.
For this purpose it uses the ACPI interface and the corresponding patches are already included in the kernel. These will take care of the correct reporting of the specifications of the individual CPU cores with the help of the ACPI CPUFreq driver, thanks to which the system scheduler will be able to better distribute tasks, which will lead to a certain increase in performance.
Intel laptop CPU performance over the last 5 years
As if reading my mind, Phoronix decided to test the performance of the latest generations of Intel mobile processors in a series of different tests. We can therefore compare the performance of the Core i7-8565U (14nm Whiskey Lake) with that of the latest Core Ultra 7 155H (current “4nm” Meteor Lake).
In terms of consumption, the 14th generation Meteor Lake maintains approximately the same maximums as the previous generation (11th Tiger Lake and above), with a more pronounced downward dispersion. Performance across all tests shows how Intel increases with each generation in recent years, compared to Tiger Lake, Meteor Lake gives about double.
Phoronix also broke down the results into task subtypes, for example testing content creator applications – i.e. audio/video coding, graphics and 3D graphics – progress across individual generations is 100 → 114 → 163 → 205 → 260%. Therefore, the intergenerational increases in these activities in Intel notebooks over the last 5 years are: +14% → +43% → +26% → +27%. Of course we are talking about the performance of the CPU part.
It is worth adding that the very first reaction in the discussion under the test refers to Intel’s new BIOSes, which make Meteor Lake even more efficient: higher performance with lower power consumption, as reported by Tomshardware.
Intel notebook iGPU performance from Gen9 to current 2nd generation Xe
Additionally, Phoronix tested a number of the latest generations of Intel integrated graphics cores. From the consumption overview, it can be said that the new generation is significantly cheaper than the previous one and almost returns to the level of the generations with older GPU cores. At the same time, performance has increased a lot, specifically Phoronix reports average performance values of 32 → 55 → 96 → 127 → 169 for the above-mentioned generations.
This means that the current Meteor Lake achieves 5.3 times higher performance than Whiskey Lake after 5 years. This represents an intergenerational increase of +72% → +73% → +32% → +33%. I would have expected more, but as we know Intel is still working feverishly on the next generation performance, such as hw raytracing support, AV1 (de)coding, etc.
In conclusion of the CPU and iGPU tests, we can say that more was expected, especially after the brutal hype that Intel has shown in relation to Meteor Lake in recent years. So far it seems like a pretty standard evolutionary step, but as we mentioned last time, average doesn’t mean that some aspect of convenience for that user hasn’t grown significantly. It is also important that Intel managed to work on energy efficiency, so we should remember once again that efficiency will continue to be optimized not only by new drivers and schedulers, but also by BIOSes.
Mesa 23.3.2, the last patch this year
According to the plan, the latest update of this year’s Mesa 23.3.2 package will be released. Logically it does not contain any major new features, it mainly brings fixes for drivers like RADV, Etnaviv, R600g, Iris, ANV or RadeonSI, and the creators also worked on fixes for the Rusticl driver, i.e. “OpenCL-on-Rust” and other minor things.
Among the fixes for Intel is the previously announced solution to run this year’s gem of a game Baldur’s Gate 3 on graphics cards with Intel GPUs (this is a backport from the Mesa development version 24.0). Details in the project mailing list.
2023-12-31 21:01:43
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