Idle CPU power management: cpuidle (from CNX Software)
April 20, 2026
We are looking at how cpufreq and its most sophisticated governor, schedutil, allow the kernel to take advantage of Dynamic Voltage/Frequency Scaling (DVFS).
cpufreq generally adopts the mantra “work when there is work to be done”. In other words, when there is a “demand” on the system, then the kernel will do its best to give these tasks the CPU time they require to perform the task. However, whenever the demand is less than 100% of the maximum CPU capacity, cpufreq will attempt to opportunistically save energy by slowing down some or all of the cores.