Many SoCs use Linux as their operating system because its open source nature allows it to be easily customized and adapted to the architecture specific to a device.Linux has rich and somewhat complicated power management  capabilities which would take an article of its own to describe in full.In this selection we will provide a very brief overview of what is available.

Linux supports dynamic frequency scaling and power is landing of CPUs through two frameworks-CPU Idle and CPU Hot plug  CPU Idle uses software components called governors which monitor the usage of the CPU and push it into various idle states based on its policy algorithm  CPU Hot plug allows a CPU in a multiprocessor to be safely shut down and potentially power islanded.