Dynamic CPU Power Management with cpufreq and schedutil (from Embedded Computing Design)
February 25, 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.
