AMD + Valve Working On New Linux CPU Performance Scaling Design
Along with other optimizations to benefit the Steam Deck, AMD and Valve have been jointly working on CPU frequency/power scaling improvements to enhance the Steam Play gaming experience on modern AMD platforms running Linux.
It's no secret that the ACPI CPUFreq driver code has at times been less than ideal on recent AMD processors with delivering less than expected performance/behavior with being slow to ramp up to a higher performance state or otherwise coming up short of disabling the power management functionality outright. AMD hasn't traditionally worked on the Linux CPU frequency scaling code as much as Intel does to their P-State scaling driver and other areas of power management at large.
AMD is ramping up efforts in these areas including around the Linux scheduler given their recent hiring spree while it now looks like thanks to the Steam Deck there is renewed interest in better optimizing the CPU frequency scaling under Linux.
[...] AMD will be presenting more about this effort next month at [the X.Org Developers Conference (XDC)].
X.Org Developer's Conference: XDC2021, Virtual (formerly Gdańsk, Poland), September 15th through September 17th, 2021.
Previously: Steam Deck is Valve's Switch-Like Portable PC: Starting at $399 this December
Related Stories
Valve Shares New Steam Deck Details, Proton Update Available For Testing
The recording from the livestream is embedded below for those interested, but some of the key takeaways from today's developer-focused Steam Deck event included:
- Steam Deck will use an immutable root file-system, albeit can be changed for developers/enthusiasts wanting more control over the system state. The immutable root file-system approach is similar to the likes of Fedora Silverblue.
- SteamOS 3.0 will be generally available in due course for those wanting to run the Arch-based Linux distribution on other hardware.
- SteamOS 3.0 is making use of PipeWire.
- Flatpak'ed apps will be supported.
- At least initially the Steam Deck is now making use of a global frame limiter but initially is being left up to the individual games to handle. We'll see how quickly such functionality or so is built into Gamescope.
- The AMD SoC powering the Steam Deck is codenamed "Aerith" and as previously reported is a quad-core Zen 2 design with RDNA2 graphics. The TDP range for Aerith is 4 to 15 Watts. The Steam Deck should support up to two 4K screens at 60Hz via the USB3/DP 1.4 DSC interface.
For Linux Enthusiasts Especially, The Steam Deck Is An Incredible & Fun Device
The most fun and promising Linux-powered gaming device for the masses though is launching today: Valve's Steam Deck. I've been fortunate to be testing out this Arch Linux derived handheld game console the past month and it has been working out very well -- both as a portable Steam gaming device but making it even more compelling from the Linux enthusiast angle is its "developer mode" that effectively turns it into a general Linux handheld and also being free to load your own Linux distribution of choice.
[...] [The] much anticipated Valve handheld gaming computer that features a 7-inch 1280 x 800 display, gaming-optimized controls, 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, 64GB to 512GB of storage depending on model, and is powered by a custom AMD APU. The AMD APU is made up of four Zen 2 cores (8 threads) and an AMD RDNA2 GPU with 8 compute units.
[...] On the software side, the Steam Deck is using SteamOS 3.0 that in turn is based on Arch Linux. SteamOS 3.0 is a complete overhaul compared to Valve's prior SteamOS work that is based on Debian GNU/Linux. SteamOS 3.0 with Arch Linux is much more fast-moving and has been seeing near-daily updates in preparation for launch.
See also:
Valve releases Steam Deck handheld PC to select few
Steam Deck review: it's not ready
The Steam Deck is already the emulation system of my dreams
Steam Deck: The comprehensive Ars Technica review
Steam Deck Review: Valve's Handheld Has Big PC Energy
Gabe Newell talks Steam Deck, crypto risks and why the PC industry "won't tolerate" closed platforms
Developers praise the Steam Deck: 'It just works, for real'
Valve Steam Deck Hardware Review & Analysis: Thermals, Noise, Power, & Gaming Benchmarks (Gamers Nexus, 35m30s video)
Steam Deck Tear-Down: Build Quality, Disassembly, & VRM Analysis (Gamers Nexus, 34m24s video)
Steam Deck 1-Month Review: SteamOS Difficulties, Software, & User Experience (Gamers Nexus, 34m28s video)
Steam Deck is Valve's Switch-like portable PC: Starting at $399 this December
Steam Deck is Valve's Switch-like portable PC, starting at $399 this December
On Thursday, Valve took the wraps off its new Switch-like portable PC, now dubbed the Steam Deck, confirming that it is indeed the hardware Ars Technica wrote about earlier this year. The device will begin shipping later this year at a starting price of $399.
The hefty-looking console, which is 11.7 inches long, will launch at three price points, differentiated by built-in storage capacity, SSD speed ratings, and differently tempered glass on its screen. Those particular upgrades will cost $529 (256GB) and $649 (512GB, "anti-glare etched glass"). Both pricier bundles include a carrying case.
Valve Announces the "Steam Deck", a Handheld Gaming PC
Valve has announced a handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck:
Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck will be based on Arch Linux:
As Ars Technica confirmed in May, two months ahead of its official reveal, Valve is about to re-enter the hardware space with its first portable PC, the Steam Deck. This custom x86 PC resembles an XL version of the Nintendo Switch and will begin shipping to buyers by the end of 2021, starting at $399.
[...] Shipping on Linux cuts manufacturing costs for Steam, insulates the company from competition with the Microsoft Store on Windows, and avoids exposing Steam Deck players to the world's premiere malware ecosystem—which also runs on Windows.
[...] "The main reason [to switch to Arch] is the rolling updates [that support] more rapid development for SteamOS 3.0," Valve designer Lawrence Yang told PC Gamer. Yang says that Arch is a better choice given the massive number of updates, changes, and customizations Valve needs to make in order to provide the best gaming experience on the Steam Deck.
Valve promises that the Steam Deck will run "the entire Steam library" at 30+ fps, so that means a lot of customizations indeed.
Previously:
AMD + Valve Working on New Linux CPU Performance Scaling Design
Steam Deck is Valve's Switch-Like Portable PC: Starting at $399 this December
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @12:43AM (3 children)
This is psyop to force me to upgrade my ancient desktop.
And damn, it's working.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:19AM (1 child)
I have a bunch of P4/C2D era systems that lost clock scaling support because they required the ACPI driver instead of the p4 clockmultiplier driver and some other pre-acpi (Conroe?) driver. Now those systems are at the mercy of the ACPI implementation in the bios, and if it doesnt' properly configure the clocking states for your CPUs you're stuck at full rate all the time with the processor only as good as your heatsink mating surface/thermal compound. If you can get a sufficient heatsink and good thermal contact, no problem. But if for some reason you can't, the only thing you've got to keep the temps down is the clock scaling driver, and if the ACPI is borked, and linux won't let you be an advanced user and switch drivers, well you're FUBAR.
With every new generation of linux developers it seems like a little more advanced functionality or duplicate and overridable drivers gets 'culled' leading to fewer options when something isn't working correctly and can't otherwise be replaced. Sadly we're just as much at the mercy of big corps under linux now as we were when we defected from Wintel back in the 90s and 2000s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:31AM
It's the corporate takeover of Linux development. After all, the programmers needs to make a living.
No, I don't have no answer.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Tuesday August 03 2021, @08:02AM
+1 funny. Sorry I ran out of mod points...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:45AM (2 children)
> AMD hasn't traditionally worked on the Linux CPU frequency scaling code as much as Intel does to their P-State scaling driver and other areas of power management at large.
A few years ago my work assigned a new Dell XPS-13 developer edition laptop to me (ships new with Linux pre-installed). I replaced the Ubuntu install by cloning my existing Debian setup to it. All seemed well until it was idle. Then, it would crash. I had backed up the original Ubuntu install first, so went back to that to see what was different. Much futzing later, and the main difference was simply that the Ubuntu version that shipped on the box was old, and used an old kernel that didn't support Intel's latest and greatest power management, while Debian's kernel did, and the new power management code (contributed by Intel) was buggy crap.
Made another copy of the ubuntu install, and upgraded it to whatever the next version was "warty wool mittens" or some such, and when it was booted, it also crashed when idle. Ha!
Dell also disabled most power saving stuff, configured the bios to not support lower C states, and setup suspend to not actually do a suspend to ram, but a lame pretend suspend. I had all these power saving features enabled in bios / Debian. But, to get the box to stop crashing all the f'ing time when idle, I had to disable the CPU c-states (I did it on the linux side).
Now, instead of crashing all the f'ing time (when idle), it only crashed frequently (when idle). Turns out the Intel GPU power saving stuff crashes linux too. Arrrrgggg!!!! So, initially I disabled GPU cstates with 'options i915 enable_dc=0', but a couple years later someone else came up with 'options i915 enable_guc_loading=1 enable_guc_submission=1' which fixes the crashes without as big a hit on battery life.
It is now running Debian Bullseye, and the 5.10 kernel no longer is crash-y with CPU c-states enabled again, but I still need to use the hack for the GPU.
The XPS-13 replaced a box running an old AMD APU. I had ZERO issues with linux on the AMD box, power saving or otherwise. So, maybe Intel should try *less* hard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @07:06PM
dell is retarded. they can't even choose the hardware to match the OS properly and their hardware is way overpriced. In short, dell is for suckers. no offense. you may have figured that out already.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Wednesday August 04 2021, @04:19PM
Every couple years someone comes forward to say, "Linus is finally ready for primetime. It is just like Windows now, but more user friendly!!!"
Linux is a confusing beast. On one hand, much of the infrastructure of the technical world is run on it. But no matter how many billions of man hours people sink into making it a usable desktop experience it remains one of the most tremendous pieces of crap ever made.
I would run Temple OS before I tried mainlining Ubuntu again.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:49AM (4 children)
Yeah you know me!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @01:57AM (3 children)
Let's ban ACs,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @02:20AM (1 child)
Me first?
O.P.P. is an obscure reference - a song from 1991, the same yeah that Linux came out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @02:35AM
Let's ban ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 03 2021, @04:49AM
welcome to /. 2.0