#FRED

Intel FRED: New Technology Boosts CPU Performance on Linux with Panther Lake

Intel has introduced FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) with its Panther Lake processors, a new technology that enhances CPU performance by optimizing event transitions between privilege levels. Benchmarks reveal significant performance improvements on Linux when FRED is enabled. Although supported in the Linux kernel since 2024, FRED remains disabled by default on Panther Lake systems and requires manual activation via the 'fred=on' boot parameter. A patch has now been submitted to enable FRED by default for supported processors, including Core Ultra Series 3 and upcoming Xeon Diamond Rapids, following demonstrated gains on Panther Lake hardware.