Re: [linux-pm] [PATCH 0/8] Suspend block api (version 8)

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@suse.de>]

On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 14:51 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 04:21:09PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> 
> > You're the one mentioning x86, not me.  I already explained that some
> > MSM hardware (the G1 for example) has lower power consumption in S3
> > (which I'm using as an ACPI shorthand for suspend to ram) than any
> > suspend from idle C state.  The fact that current x86 hardware has the
> > same problem may be true, but it's not entirely relevant.
> 
> As long as you can set a wakeup timer, an S state is just a C state with 
> side effects. The significant one is that entering an S state stops the 
> process scheduler and any in-kernel timers. I don't think Google care at 
> all about whether suspend is entered through an explicit transition or 
> something hooked into cpuidle - the relevant issue is that they want to 
> be able to express a set of constraints that lets them control whether 
> or not the scheduler keeps on scheduling, and which doesn't let them 
> lose wakeup events in the process.

Exactly, so my understanding of where we currently are is:

     1. pm_qos will be updated to be able to express the android suspend
        blockers as interactivity constraints (exact name TBD, but
        probably /dev/cpu_interactivity)
     2. pm_qos will be updated to be callable from atomic context
     3. pm_qos will be updated to export statistics initially closely
        matching what suspend blockers provides (simple update of the rw
        interface?)

After this is done, the current android suspend block patch becomes a
re-expression in kernel space in terms of pm_qos, with the current
userspace wakelocks being adapted by the android framework into pm_qos
requirements expressed to /dev/cpu_interactivity (or whatever name is
chosen).  Then opportunistic suspend is either a small add-on kernel
patch they have in their tree to suspend when the interactivity
constraint goes to NONE, or it could be done entirely by a userspace
process.  Long term this could migrate to the freezer and suspend from
idle approach as the various problem timers get fixed.

I think the big unresolved issue is the stats extension.  For android,
we need just a name written along with the value, so we have something
to hang the stats off ... current pm_qos userspace users just write a
value, so the name would be optional.  From the kernel, we probably just
need an additional API that takes a stats name or NULL if none
(pm_qos_add_request_named()?).  Then reading the stats could be done by
implementing a fops read routine on the misc device.

Did I miss anything?

James