[PATCH] cpufreq: cap the default transition delay at 10 ms

Shawn Guo
2025-09-10T07:04:14Z

From: Shawn Guo <shawnguo@kernel.org>

A regression is seen with 6.6 -> 6.12 kernel upgrade on platforms where
cpufreq-dt driver sets cpuinfo.transition_latency as CPUFREQ_ETERNAL (-1),
due to that platform's DT doesn't provide the optional property
'clock-latency-ns'. The dbs sampling_rate was 10000 us on 6.6 and
suddently becomes 6442450 us (4294967295 / 1000 * 1.5) on 6.12 for these
platforms, because that the 10 ms cap for transition_delay_us was
accidentally dropped by the commits below.

commit 37c6dccd6837 ("cpufreq: Remove LATENCY_MULTIPLIER")
commit a755d0e2d41b ("cpufreq: Honour transition_latency over transition_delay_us")
commit e13aa799c2a6 ("cpufreq: Change default transition delay to 2ms")

It slows down dbs governor's reacting to CPU loading change
dramatically. Also, as transition_delay_us is used by schedutil governor
as rate_limit_us, it shows a negative impact on device idle power
consumption, because the device gets slightly less time in the lowest OPP.

Fix the regressions by adding the 10 ms cap on transition delay back.

Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Fixes: 37c6dccd6837 ("cpufreq: Remove LATENCY_MULTIPLIER")
Signed-off-by: Shawn Guo <shawnguo@kernel.org>
---
drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c | 9 +++++++--
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c b/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
index fc7eace8b65b..36e0c85cb4e0 100644
--- a/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
+++ b/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
@@ -551,8 +551,13 @@ unsigned int cpufreq_policy_transition_delay_us(struct cpufreq_policy *policy)

latency = policy->cpuinfo.transition_latency / NSEC_PER_USEC;
if (latency)
- /* Give a 50% breathing room between updates */
- return latency + (latency >> 1);
+ /*
+ * Give a 50% breathing room between updates.
+ * And cap the transition delay to 10 ms for platforms
+ * where the latency is too high to be reasonable for
+ * reevaluating frequency.
+ */
+ return min(latency + (latency >> 1), 10 * MSEC_PER_SEC);

return USEC_PER_MSEC;
}
--
2.43.0