CPU Performance Scaling

There are various CPU performance modes available on the platform which can be set by accessing the terminal on the device.

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_available_governors
conservative ondemand userspace powersave performance schedutil

Mode	Behavior	Tradeoff
performance	Locks CPU at maximum frequency	🔥 highest power, lowest latency
powersave	Locks CPU at minimum frequency	🐢 lowest power, slowest
schedutil	Scheduler-driven dynamic scaling (modern default)	⚖️ balanced, efficient
ondemand	Quickly ramps up on load, drops when idle	⚡ responsive but older approach
conservative	Slowly increases/decreases frequency	🌿 smoother, but slower response
userspace	Manual control from user-space programs	🛠️ full control, more work

To see the current performance mode, run this command.

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_governor
performance

To see the clock frequency limits, run these commands.

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_cur_freq # Current CPU frequency
1600000
$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_max_freq # Max CPU frequency
1600000
$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_min_freq # Min CPU frequency
1200000

If you want maximum performance from the device, you can set the device to performance mode which runs the CPU cluster at the highest available frequency.

$ echo performance | sudo tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_governor
performance

You can find more information on CPU Performance Scaling here.