Google engineer Qais Yousef has posted a set of 16 patches for the " Schedutil " scheduler utilization code within the Linux kernel to better manage system response time. Schedutil is often used by default on many Linux distributions and with these patches a popular web browser benchmark can be as much as 30% faster with these kernel patches.

Qais Yousef posted the set of 16 patches on Tuesday as a new take on a patch series he posted last year to remove hardcoded margings within the CPUFreq scheduler code.

The patch cover letter to this new series [RFC PATCH 00/16] sched/fair/schedutil: Better manage system response time goes into the technical details on all of the low-level work involved for better managing the system response time within the Schedutil code.

For end-users the exciting aspect is the Speedometer web browser benchmark result shared:

Starting out at 352 runs per minute with the Speedometer scheduler benchmark and ending with these patch series and a ramp-up multiplier of four to yield a score of 456 runs per minute, a 29.5% boost. That was the only benchmark provided at this time.

If these patches move along and are on a trajectory for mainlining in the Linux kernel, it will be very interesting to test these patches with a more diverse set of workloads in looking at the power and performance.