Is Intel SST-Base Frequency (BF) supported on RHEL with my Intel Processor?

Environment

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (kernel-4.18.0-80.2.1.el8_0 and later)
• Intel Processor SKUs that support SST-BF such as 6252N/6230N/5218N
• Intel Speed Select Technology - Base Frequency (SST-BF)

Issue

• How can I use Intel SST-BF with RHEL 7 or RHEL 8 with my Cascade Lake N CPU?
• Is Intel SST-BF supported with RHEL 7 or RHEL 8 on Cascade Lake N CPUs?
• Is Intel SST-BF supported on RHEL on Intel SKU’s such as 6252N?

Resolution

Intel SST-BF is a technology that allows the cpu frequency to be distributed across cores in an asymmetric configuration. This enables users to boost performance of targeted applications at runtime.

RHEL 8

Support for Intel SST-BF is available starting with RHEL 8.2. See the file Documentation/admin-guide/pm/intel-speed-select.rst for usage details. This file is part of the kernel-doc rpm.

RHEL 7

RHEL 7 has no support for SST-BF and will not have support for it in the future.