The processors Intel Core of 14th generation, known as Raptor Lake Refresh, have debuted a new feature that aims to increase the performance of programs running on the system. It’s about Intel Application Optimization (APO), a technology introduced by Intel as an integral part of Dynamic Tuning Technology (DTT) which deals with improving performance and efficiency.
APO uses a mechanism that is based on profiles to actively optimize your planning thread. The technology developed by Intel determines and directs application resources in real time, promising a significant increase in performance.
For the moment, Pat Gelsinger’s company has focused on a set of video games (the 14th generation processors manage to increase the number of frames per second up to 31% in certain situations) but nothing prevents it from extending the “radius of ‘action’ of APO also to applications that determine particular workloads.
It must be said that APO support, for now, is limited to a small number of motherboards and the selection of games that support Intel technology is very limited.
Intel Application Optimization e le differenze con Intel Thread Director
Intel Thread Director is a hardware-integrated technology: it ensures that the right thread is executed on the right core at the right time. Introduced as part of the hybrid architecture Alder LakeThread Director must be supported by the operating system to effectively monitor workloads and acquire reliable, real-time information about the activity of each core.
If on one hand Intel Thread Director consists of a solution capable of providing instructions to optimize the distribution of workloads on the processor cores, Intel Application Optimization is a technology that goes even further by disabling some E cores when they are not needed or by keeping them running at high frequencies when processes to be managed require it. APO gives priority ai P core “squeezing” the E cores as much as possible in situations where the application requires maximum computational power.
Both approaches are configured as optimizations daughters of the introduction of the hybrid architecture in Intel processors and the differentiation between E cores and P cores.
At a software level, APO can be managed via a dedicated interface, as Intel explains in the support documentation.
APO will not come to Raptor/Alder Lake Refresh
Preferring not to go into more technical details at the moment, Intel spokespersons have confirmed that APO will not also be usable on 12th and 13th generation processors, Raptor Lake e Alder Lake Refresh.
In fact, the company limited itself to declaring that there are no plans to bring APO to previous platforms and that it will therefore remain the prerogative of the 14th generation Intel Core or Raptor Lake Refresh.
At the moment, with rather limited hardware and software support, the lack of APO support on previous generation processors is not of any concern. It could start to be a source of some grumbling if support for this new technology were to be significantly expanded.
