Intel is releasing Linux patches to enhance Meteor Lake performance and efficiency

There have been high expectations for Intel’s Meteor Lake as the successor of Raptor Lake. The company has been presumably doing what it can to make the most of its new CPU layout, which consists of what it’s calling chiplets — pieces of silicon that come together to deliver the functionality of a whole processor. Intel is also seemingly trying to make amends for its attempt to capitalize quickly on its 10nm node. Rather than trying to roll out several advancements in a short period of time, the company has debuted a more thought-out manufacturing roadmap for the remainder of the year. Now, Intel has released a series of Linux patches to make sure it doesn’t speed past improvements that need to be made.

As Intel detailed in a log with the release, the patches are specifically designed to override the existing Energy Performance Preference (EPP) of Meteor Lake CPUs for Linux. One of the patches now allows users to create EEP overrides for all of the pre-defined EPP strings of their particular device model (via Phoronix). The other patch is an update for the preset EPP values on Meteor Lake chips — rather than having a balanced_performance default level of 128, Intel has altered it to 115. Additionally, the “performance” EPP has been changed from 0 to 16.

Notably, Intel did not include any insight into how these changes will specifically impact clock speed or power usage. However, some believe that the patch adjustment to balanced_performance could take away from the chip’s overall performance (via Tom’s Hardware). Intel has reiterated that this won’t be the case, but users will likely have the final say. In terms of the tweak to the “performance” EPP, there is the potential for a slight performance boost as a result of reduced throttling. Again, though, the final verdict is still out.