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cherryteastaintoday at 11:54 AM1 replyview on HN

> To my knowledge Linux isn’t that capable on BIG.little

Android uses Linux as it kernel and runs on billions of devices with heterogeneous cores. Linux had this capability for way longer than Windows did; Windows for the most part did not run on devices with heterogeneous cores until the Intel Alder Lake (12th gen) CPUs.

Win11 outperformed Linux at Alder Lake release too [1] but eventually this changed and Linux was better on Meteor Lake [2]. Probably Arrow Lake has some microarchitectural changes which do not mesh well with Linux's core scheduling logic which Intel will need to fix, at which point Linux will probably close the gap again.

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/alderlake-windows-linux/9 [2] https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-meteorlake-windows-lin...


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okanattoday at 1:35 PM

> Android uses Linux as it kernel and runs on billions of devices with heterogeneous cores. Linux had this capability for way longer than Windows did; Windows for the most part did not run on devices with heterogeneous cores until the Intel Alder Lake (12th gen) CPUs.

The extra capabilities of Android come from custom patches from Qualcomm kernels. They are so far diverged from the mainline, it is really really hard to merge it back. They not only add drivers but patch the kernel itself. Windows NT can have hints for thread scheduling from the userspace since they control Win32. Now the question becomes is there a way to patch Glibc and all other system libraries on Linux to give equal information to Linux kernel. Of course Linux kernel can guess but it is a lossy information channel.