Re: [PATCH 3/3] PM: Introduce Intel PowerClamp Driver

["Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:02:00AM +0100, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 02:45:11 PM Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > On 11/13/2012 2:23 PM, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 01:39:22PM -0800, Jacob Pan wrote:
> > >> On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:16:02 -0800
> > >> "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>> Please refer to Documentation/thermal/intel_powerclamp.txt for more
> > >>>> details.  
> > >>>
> > >>> If I read this correctly, this forces a group of CPUs into idle for
> > >>> about 600 milliseconds at a time.  This would indeed delay grace
> > >>> periods, which could easily result in user complaints.  Also, given
> > >>> the default RCU_BOOST_DELAY of 500 milliseconds in kernels enabling
> > >>> RCU_BOOST, you would see needless RCU priority boosting.
> > >>>
> > >> the default idle injection duration is 6ms. we adjust the sleep
> > >> interval to ensure idle ratio. So the idle duration stays the same once
> > >> set. So would it be safe to delay grace period for this small amount in
> > >> exchange for less over head in each injection period?
> > > 
> > > Ah, 6ms of delay is much better than 600ms.  Should be OK (famous last
> > > words!).
> > 
> > well... power clamping is not "free".
> > You're going to lose performance as a trade off for dropping instantaneous power consumption....
> 
> Yes.  It is good to realize that when the clamping triggers, we already
> have some more to worry about than losing some performance. :-)
> 
> The problem here is to find a way to lose as little performance as we possibly
> can and prevent the system from overheating at the same time.

Understood.  My concern is in-kernel confusion rather than performance.

							Thanx, Paul