Meteor Lake is receiving new patches on Linux aimed at improving its efficiency at medium and high performance levels (via Phoronix). The patch replaces the default performance and power profile that Meteor Lake has been using since its launch in December and replaces the default performance and power values with those that are more suitable for Meteor Lake.
The patch is quite simple and focuses only on setting the Energy Performance Preference (EPP) values. EPP is basically the Linux version of power plans and can be configured to a value from 0 to 255, with lower numbers meaning higher performance and power. Linux offers different power options with predefined values, such as “performance” and “performance_balance”, both of which the patch altered from the defaults.
Normally, Balanced_Performance has an EPP value of 128, which is right in the middle of the range, and performance is at 0, allowing for maximum performance and power consumption. Intel adjusted balanced performance to 115 and performance to 16, saying that both offer better efficiency than the default values. It is implied that the balanced performance power plan sacrificed a bit of performance for this efficiency, but Intel says going from 0 to 16 in the performance plan offers “similar performance.”
Exact performance numbers, clock speed, or power were not provided in the patch notes, but if Intel wants to increase efficiency, then it is doing so in the right way. Most processors have an ideal point for efficiency, but at the lower and upper ends of a processor’s power range, efficiency is not very favorable.
For the performance power profile, it is easy to imagine that the power difference between 0 and 16 was much greater than the performance difference. This extra power can drain batteries faster, heat up devices, and even cause thermal throttling in devices with small coolers. In fact, Intel claims that this adjustment will increase performance in small form factor devices, thanks to lower temperatures and less thermal throttling.
Although this kind of adjustment is quite small in the grand scheme of things, Intel is likely looking to get every possible advantage out of Meteor Lake. The competition between it and rival processors from AMD and Apple is fierce, and Meteor Lake is not exactly impressive when it comes to raw performance. This Linux patch isn’t the first time Intel has tried to extract more efficiency from a post-launch Meteor Lake. Previously, a new BIOS resulted in higher performance and efficiency, narrowing the gap between Intel’s top-of-the-line chips and AMD’s.