RE: [PATCH v1 1/3] cpuidle: governors: menu: Avoid selecting states with too much latency

["Doug Smythies" <dsmythies@telus.net>]

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Hi Rafael,

Recent email communications about other patches had me
looking at this one again. 

On 2025.08.13 03:26 Rafael wrote:
> From: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
>
... snip...

> However, after the above change, latency_req cannot take the predicted_ns
> value any more, which takes place after commit 38f83090f515 ("cpuidle:
> menu: Remove iowait influence"), because it may cause a polling state
> to be returned prematurely.
>
> In the context of the previous example say that predicted_ns is 3000 and
> the PM QoS latency limit is still 20 us.  Additionally, say that idle
> state 0 is a polling one.  Moving the exit_latency_ns check before the
> target_residency_ns one causes the loop to terminate in the second
> iteration, before the target_residency_ns check, so idle state 0 will be
> returned even though previously state 1 would be returned if there were
> no imminent timers.
>
> For this reason, remove the assignment of the predicted_ns value to
> latency_req from the code.

Which is okay for timer-based workflow,
but what about non-timer based, or interrupt driven, workflow?

Under conditions where idle state 0, or Polling, would be used a lot,
I am observing about a 11 % throughput regression with this patch
And idle state 0, polling, usage going from 20% to 0%. 

From my testing of kernels 6.17-rc1, rc2,rc3 in August and September
and again now. I missed this in August/September:

779b1a1cb13a cpuidle: governors: menu: Avoid selecting states with too much latency - v6.17-rc3
fa3fa55de0d6 cpuidle: governors: menu: Avoid using invalid recent intervals data - v6.17-rc2
baseline reference: v6.17-rc1

teo was included also. As far as I can recall its response has always been similar to rc3. At least, recently.

Three graphs are attached:
Sampling data once per 20 seconds, the test is started after the first idle sample,
and at least one sample is taken after the system returns to idle after the test.
The faster the test runs the better.

Test computer:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10600K CPU @ 4.10GHz
Distro: Ubuntu 24.04.3, server, no desktop GUI.
CPU frequency scaling driver: intel_pstate
HWP: disabled.
CPU frequency scaling governor: performance
Ilde driver: intel_idle
Idle governor: menu (except teo for one compare test run)
Idle states: 4: name : description:
  state0/name:POLL                desc:CPUIDLE CORE POLL IDLE
  state1/name:C1_ACPI          desc:ACPI FFH MWAIT 0x0
  state2/name:C2_ACPI          desc:ACPI FFH MWAIT 0x30
  state3/name:C3_ACPI          desc:ACPI FFH MWAIT 0x60


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