Linus Torvalds Demands AVX-512’s End: Intel’s Power‑Hungry Extension Hurts Users

Linus Torvalds recently attacked Intel’s Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (AVX‑512) instruction set, labeling it a “power‑virus” designed solely to boost benchmark scores rather than improve real‑world performance.

AVX‑512, introduced by Intel in 2013, expands the SIMD width to 512 bits, allowing up to 32 double‑precision or 64 single‑precision floating‑point operations per clock cycle, targeting workloads such as image/video processing, data analytics, scientific computing, encryption, compression, and deep learning.

Intel’s upcoming Alder Lake CPUs will limit AVX‑512 and other large extensions to the high‑performance cores, while the efficiency cores will only support AVX‑2 and lighter extensions. This design aims to increase throughput on the big cores and improve power efficiency on the small cores, effectively restricting AVX‑512, TSX, and FP16 to the large cores.

In response, Linus posted a lengthy comment stating:

“I want AVX‑512 to die a painful death so Intel can focus on solving real problems instead of creating flashy instructions for benchmark gymnastics.”

He further urged Intel to return to basics, emphasizing regular integer code and better user experience over niche high‑performance tricks, and criticized Intel’s floating‑point performance as historically inferior to competitors.

Linus also recalled his 2018 criticism of Intel’s IBRS patch for Spectre, calling it “complete garbage,” and his recent refusal of an AWS‑submitted Intel security patch, mocking it as “pretentious.”

Overall, Linus argues that AVX‑512 adds unnecessary complexity and consumes valuable CPU resources, benefiting only a narrow set of specialized workloads while degrading the experience for most users.

He suggests that a well‑designed FPU for special cases would suffice, and that AVX‑2 already provides ample performance for typical applications.