With the launch of the 12th generation of Intel’s processor lineup, this veteran processor manufacturer introduced Intel Thread Director. Unlike traditional processors, where all cores are designed for the same thing, the 12th generation of Intel processors introduced different types of cores, High performance and energy efficiency and with different architectures, the problem of their management therefore arose.
The solution was Intel Thread Director. Intel Thread Director is a technology that helps the operating system correctly assign processes to each type of cores based on their capabilities to balance the workload to the maximum and maximize performance.
Contrary to what many users think, Intel Thread Director is not a piece of hardware, but rather a program built into the processor that provides the necessary information for the processor to do its job of distributing tasks efficiently.
This technology works hand in hand with the operating system to manage resources and does not replace them at any time. This feature of Intel 12th generation processors and above works perfectly with Windows, however, in Linux things changed a lot, as the performance in general left a lot to be desired compared to the level offered in Windows.
Thanks to the latest improvements to the Windows kernel, the efficiency and performance management of Intel series processors have been significantly improved, increasing up to 14% in certain workloads, especially in the management of virtual machines. Added to the improvements received by the Linux kernel are the fixes that Intel has released to work with Thread Director virtualization to improve the performance of virtual machines, especially in the case of running Linux as a host running a Windows virtual machine to run games.
This improvement is not intended for individual users, but rather for Linux servers which are responsible for offering video game streaming in the cloud. Intel Thread Director ensures that the virtual machine can handle workloads between high-performance and efficient cores, delivering superior performance. 14% higher
For servers to benefit from this improvement in performance and energy efficiency, it is necessary that in addition to installing the corresponding patches, the kernel version they use is updated, since this improvement is linked both to the kernel and the patches that Intel has released.
While it is true that Microsoft also has an operating system to manage servers, Windows Serverthis is still very far from approaching the market share that Linux currently has in this sector, for different reasons, the main one being the price, since Windows Server is not exactly cheap and, although it is more intuitive than Linux, the price of Linux distributions for servers is a fundamental reason.