That control is fully enabled in Windows 11, and Windows 10 can get most of the way there but doesn’t have all the bells and whistles for finer details – Linux support is in development.
The goal is that software that is not urgent runs on efficiency cores, but time-sensitive software runs on performance cores, and that has required a new management control between the processor and Windows has been developed to enable Alder Lake to work at its best. Each of the cores is designed differently to optimize for their targets, but supports the same software. The desktop processor silicon will have eight performance cores (P-cores) and eight efficiency cores (E-cores), the latter in two groups of four.