Re: [PATCH] cpufreq, intel_pstate, Fix intel_pstate powersave min_perf_pct value

["Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@rjwysocki.net>]

On Wednesday, October 14, 2015 07:59:38 PM Prarit Bhargava wrote:
> 
> On 10/14/2015 05:09 PM, Kristen Carlson Accardi wrote:
> > On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 07:41:59 -0400
> > Prarit Bhargava <prarit@redhat.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> On systems that initialize the intel_pstate driver with the performance
> >> governor, and then switch to the powersave governor will not transition to
> >> lower cpu frequencies until /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/min_perf_pct
> >> is set to a low value.
> >>
> >> The behavior of governor switching changed after commit a04759924e25
> >> ("[cpufreq] intel_pstate: honor user space min_perf_pct override on
> >>  resume").  The commit introduced tracking of performance percentage
> >> changes via sysfs in order to restore userspace changes during
> >> suspend/resume.  The problem occurs because the global values of the newly
> >> introduced max_sysfs_pct and min_sysfs_pct are not lowered on the governor
> >> change and this causes the powersave governor to inherit the performance
> >> governor's settings.
> >>
> >> A simple change would have been to reset max_sysfs_pct to 100 and
> >> min_sysfs_pct to 0 on a governor change, which fixes the problem with
> >> governor switching.  However, since we cannot break userspace[1] the fix
> >> is now to give each governor its own limits storage area so that governor
> >> specific changes are tracked.
> >>
> >> I successfully tested this by booting with both the performance governor
> >> and the powersave governor by default, and switching between the two
> >> governors (while monitoring /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/ values,
> >> and looking at the output of cpupower frequency-info).  Suspend/Resume
> >> testing was performed by Doug Smythies.
> >>
> >> [1] Systems which suspend/resume using the unmaintained pm-utils package
> >> will always transition to the performance governor before the suspend and
> >> after the resume.  This means a system using the powersave governor will
> >> go from powersave to performance, then suspend/resume, performance to
> >> powersave.  The simple change during governor changes would have been
> >> overwritten when the governor changed before and after the suspend/resume.
> >> I have submitted https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1271225
> >> against Fedora to remove the 94cpufreq file that causes the problem.  It
> >> should be noted that pm-utils is obsoleted with newer versions of systemd.
> >>
> >> Cc: Kristen Carlson Accardi <kristen@linux.intel.com>
> >> Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@rjwysocki.net>
> >> Cc: Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>
> >> Cc: linux-pm@vger.kernel.org
> >> Cc: Doug Smythies <dsmythies@telus.net>
> >> Signed-off-by: Prarit Bhargava <prarit@redhat.com>
> > 
> > Acked-by: Kristen Carlson Accardi <kristen@linux.intel.com>
> > 
> > BTW - I think I can see an issue here with HWP enabled systems.  It
> > looks to me like the hwp settings will not be programmed correctly
> > during a governor switch.  This probably needs to be addressed in a
> > separate patch.
> > 
> 
> Oh, I see it now too.  I'll get to that in another patch.  Thanks for pointing
> that out Kristen.

The $subject patch doesn't apply any more after the series from Srinivas that
I've just applied.

Can you please rebase it on top of my bleeding-edge branch?

Thanks,
Rafael