Intel recently released a one-line code patch for its Meteor Lake CPUs, resulting in huge performance wins in Linux. That single line of code fine-tunes the P-State CPU frequency scaling driver. In benchmark tests, the seemingly minor change resulted in Linux performance increases as high as 72% on Intel’s Core Ultra PC systems.
The patch, sent out on June 6, 2024, adjusts the Intel P-State Energy Performance Preference (EPP) default “balance_performance” value. This sets the balance between power and performance in a processor. The allowable range for the EPP is from 0 to 255 and it was set to 128 in February before Intel changed it to 115. The latest patch further refines the value from 115 to 64.
Initial testing of the change showed up to 19% better performance on the Meteor Lake processors and up to 11% improvement in performance per watt. Michael Larabel at Phoronix decided to conduct some more extensive benchmark tests to determine how much better the Meteor Lake CPU could perform after the single-line patch.
