Re: 2.6.21-rc6-mm1

Andi Kleen
2007-04-11T13:19:49Z

>
> So my point is that you cannot use the PMU to account for wall-clock time when you
> go in halted state. Yet, you could use the idle notifier to compensate for it by
> recording let's say TSC prior to entry and computing delta on exit. But then I am
> not sure what you would do with it given that other events may or may not have
> counted during that time, making scaling harder to do.

I think correcting it with the TSC is fine. It might not be perfect, but it's
good enough for most uses. Certainly much better than idle=poll

> Once solution, implemented by Itanium Montecito processor, is to have a PMU event
> that counts cycles spent in halted state.

This solution is incompatible with aggressive power management.

-Andi