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

Shawn Guo
2025-09-12T13:08:24Z

On Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 12:41:14PM +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 8:53 AM Shawn Guo <shawnguo2@yeah.net> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> IIRC, this was not accidental.

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the intention of Qais's
commits is to drop 10 ms (and LATENCY_MULTIPLIER) as the *minimal* limit
on transition_delay_us, so that it's possible to get a much less
transition_delay_us on platforms like M1 mac mini where the transition
latency is just tens of us. But it breaks platforms where 10 ms used
to be the *maximum* limit.

Even if it's intentional to remove 10 ms as both the minimal and maximum
limits, breaking some platforms must not be intentional, I guess :)

> Why do you want to address the issue in the cpufreq core instead of
> doing that in the cpufreq-dt driver?

My intuition was to fix the regression at where the regression was
introduced by recovering the code behavior.

> CPUFREQ_ETERNAL doesn't appear to be a reasonable default for
> cpuinfo.transition_latency. Maybe just change the default there to 10
> ms?

I think cpufreq-dt is doing what it's asked to do, no?

/*
* Maximum transition latency is in nanoseconds - if it's unknown,
* CPUFREQ_ETERNAL shall be used.
*/

Also, 10 ms will then be turned into 15 ms by:

/* Give a 50% breathing room between updates */
return latency + (latency >> 1);

Shawn