One of the many interesting Linux kernel innovations I have closely been following this year has been the proposed Cache Aware Scheduling support. I have shown the Cache Aware Scheduling performance on AMD EPYC as well as the Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids performance , but what about desktops? In this article is a quick look at Cache Aware Scheduling with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.

While not as interesting as running on big server CPUs, stemming from my own curiosity and reader interest over the holiday weekend I ran benchmarks looking at the performance of Linux 6.18 upstream compared to applying the Cache Aware Scheduling v2 patches on top.

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D was the focus of this round of benchmarking.

No other software/hardware changes were made besides changing out the kernel in use with the carried Cache Aware Scheduling "CAS" patches.






For various desktop-type workloads, the Cache Aware Scheduling kernel didn't yield any gains for the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Linux system.






Most workloads tested were rather unchanged for this dual CCD AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor compared to testing on the bigger server CPUs.




Among Linux server workloads on the Ryzen 9 9950X3D -- such as if using this CPU in a development box, SOHO server, or akin to the EPYC 4000 series -- most workloads also didn't see any real difference on the patched kernel.




PostgreSQL was one of the notable exceptions though in seeing improved performance -- better throughput and lower latency -- on the Cache Aware Scheduling enabled kernel for this AMD Ryzen 9 system.


Some of the localhost network testing did benefit too from the Cache Aware Scheduling on this AMD Zen 5 3D V-Cache desktop CPU.





Overall the Cache Aware Scheduling kernel tests on the Ryzen 9 9950X3D weren't as exciting as when running on big AMD EPYC or Intel Xeon servers. Now at least you know.