RFC: Dynamic hwcaps

[jamie@shareable.org (Jamie Lokier)]

Dave Martin wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Thomas Petazzoni
> <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Fri, 3 Dec 2010 16:28:27 +0000
> > Dave Martin <dave.martin@linaro.org> wrote:
> >
> >> This allows for more active power management of such functional
> >> blocks: if the CPU is not fully loaded, you can turn them off -- the
> >> kernel can spot when there is significant idle time and do this. ?If
> >> the CPU becomes fully loaded, applications which have soft-realtime
> >> constraints can notice this and switch to their accelerated code
> >> (which will cause the kernel to switch the functional unit(s) on).
> >> Or, the kernel can react to increasing CPU load by speculatively turn
> >> it on instead. ?This is analogous to the behaviour of other power
> >> governors in the system. ?Non-aware applications will still work
> >> seamlessly -- these may simply run accelerated code if the hardware
> >> supports it, causing the kernel to turn the affected functional
> >> block(s) on.
> >
> > From a power management perspective, is it really useful to load the
> > CPU instead of using specialized units which usually provide more
> > computing power per watt consumed ?
> 
> No--- but you can't in general just exchange cycles on one functional
> unit for cycles on another in the same way as you
> 
> Suppose 90% if your code (by execution time) can take advantage of a
> specialised functional unit.  Should you turn that unit on?
> 
> Now, suppose only 5% of the code can take advantage, but the platform
> is not completely busy.  Turning on a special functional unit consumes
> extra power and will provide no speedup to the user -- is it still
> worth turning it on?  What if the CPU is fully loaded doing other work
> and your program is close to missing its realtime deadlines -- should
> you turn on the separate unit now?

I think Thomas's point is that doing the 5% on the CPU may consume
more power than turning on the special functional unit - even when
the system is not busy and the user doesn't see a time difference.

I don't know if that's true for available hardware, but it seems like
it's worth investigating before taking the idea further.

-- Jamie