The BORE scheduler on Linux is even better, as it’s specifically optimized for the features in these chips.
Not yet in the Torvalds tree of Linux? There’s a ton of interesting schedulers coming when sched_ext lands to the mainline:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/sched_ext-Ahead-Of-Linux-6.12
Also, would be great if more distros would compile packages with AVX512, there’s a ton of perf left on the table:
Not yet in the Torvalds tree of Linux?
I don’t think they’re gonna switch schedulers that quickly. They only changed from CFS (which they used for decades) to EEVDF last October.
Not until sched_ext lands, and you can then switch schedulers as you wish. Maybe in 6.12?
It’s pretty easy to patch the kernel in NixOS:
https://git.sr.ht/~pimeys/nixos/commit/2a023c5ccc8a499dcb4ea14b0ab52c33db3f3523
It definitely feels snappier even with my 5950x. I hope this lands to mainline soon, compiling kernel for every update takes a few minutes extra.
There are custom pre-compiled kernels that come with BORE. Not sure about Nix and I don’t know if they even have custom kernels in the repos at all, but there is linux-cachyos-bore on Arch. CachyOS is a pretty cool Arch-based distro that offers multiple kernels with different optimizations. They also put them in the AUR, so any Arch user can install them.
Thanks for sparking my interest on cachyos kernels and what they patch. In addition to bore, they also patch the sched_ext support!
https://github.com/CachyOS/linux-cachyos?tab=readme-ov-file#cachyos-default-kernel
Now, what this means is you can boot this kernel, then just start the scheduler from userland, e.g.
run0 scx_rustland
It uses bpf, so the scheduler switches immediately and is as fast as anything in the kernel space. What makes this rustland scheduler super interesting is how it can detect what application is currently active, and give it a full priority over anything else. So you can compile code in the background with all cores, and at the same time play a game with the best frame rate.
There are other sched_ext schedulers available, at least on nixos with the cachyos kernel I get a bunch of scx_ binaries to play with.
For nix users here, nyx flake packages and compiles the cachyos kernel:
They have a few in the main branch: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/pkgs/os-specific/linux/kernel
I see rt and zen at least being available. Would of course be quite easy to just send them a PR for bore patches, but I think I wait for sched_ext to land instead…
