Re: [PATCH 0/8] Suspend block api (version 6)

["Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>]

On Tuesday 04 May 2010, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 May 2010, Kevin Hilman wrote:
> > Mark Brown <broonie@opensource.wolfsonmicro.com> writes:
> > 
> > > On Mon, May 03, 2010 at 05:43:34PM -0700, Brian Swetland wrote:
> > >> On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Arve Hjønnevåg <arve@android.com> wrote:
> > >> > On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 4:37 PM, Kevin Hilman
> > >
> > >> >> This last point is especially troubling.  I don't find it a comforting
> > >> >> path to go down if the drivers have to start caring about which PM
> > >> >> policy is currently in use.
> > >
> > >> I'll echo Arve here -- all drivers should seek to be in the lowest
> > >> power state possible at all times.  We've never suggested that
> > >> suspend_block is a substitute for that.
> > >
> > > Looking at this from a subsystem/driver author point of view the problem
> > > I'm faced with is that as a result of using system suspend much more
> > > aggressively the subsystem and driver layers are getting conflicting
> > > instructions about what the lowest power state possible is.
> > 
> > Exactly.
> > 
> > With runtime PM, there is flexibility in choosing the lowest power
> > state at the device/subsystem level, based on activity, timeouts,
> > bitrate, dependencies, latency/throughput constraints, etc.
> > 
> > With opportunistic suspend, all of this flexibility is gone, and the
> > device/subsystem is told to go into the lowest power, highest latency
> > state, period.
> 
> Guys, please.
> 
> The opportunistic suspend feature is _not_ to replace runtime PM by any means!
> 
> However, there are situations in which runtime PM is clearly insufficient.
> The idea behind runtime PM is that subsystems and device drivers will know
> when to put devices into low power states and save energy this way.  Still,
> even if all subsystems do that 100% efficiently, there may be more savings
> possible by putting the entire system into a sleep state (like on ACPI-based
> PCs) and we can reach there by runtime PM alone.

s/can/can't/; s/reach/go/

Rafael