[RFC] Enable 1000 Hz by default
First of all, it's worth mentioning that as noted in Kconfig, 1000 Hz is recommended for desktop systems, as frequent timer interrupts allow the CPU to switch between tasks more quickly and thus improve responsiveness. I know that 1000 Hz was already enabled in the Arch kernel until 4.16.2-2: 8f6da242, after which it was changed to 300 Hz, and while I don't know what the purpose of this change was, and probably there were reasons for it, many Linux distributions now have the opposite tendency:
- Ubuntu enabled 1000 Hz by default for its x86 kernel builds in 24.04: https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-kernel/ubuntu/+source/linux/+git/noble/commit/?h=master-next&id=2396118b8bc59c35fb50839e8f190922251c3fad. They also did a very good and relevant comparison between 250 Hz and 1000 Hz, which showed reduced power consumption and minor performance regressions in terms of throughput under high load, although fio benchmarks on other hand showed a slight improvement: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/enable-low-latency-features-in-the-generic-ubuntu-kernel-for-24-04/42255
- Fedora has enabled 1000 Hz by default for x86: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/kernel/blob/da451d9bb29fbd1824aa0def7eab4c365af5bbe1/f/kernel-x86_64-fedora.config#_2790
- OpenSUSE has enabled 1000 Hz by default for x86: https://github.com/openSUSE/kernel-source/blob/713be8f904ebf56ba774fa09c792df57b2b61e55/config/x86_64/default#L525
- In kernel defconfig for x86, 1000 Hz is also enabled by default: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/70c8dc9104275037a39ab0b2a4ed6eaacac39e32/arch/x86/configs/x86_64_defconfig#L42
- Some custom kernels also note that 1000 Hz value has performance improvement for gaming: https://github.com/Frogging-Family/linux-tkg/commit/3bfe0af94592cd97a72c2317c32f62a640b11213.
So, with all of this in mind, I'd like to ask maintainers to reconsider enabling 1000 Hz for the Arch kernel by default.