From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756413AbbJ2KRz (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Oct 2015 06:17:55 -0400 Received: from mail-wi0-f177.google.com ([209.85.212.177]:35708 "EHLO mail-wi0-f177.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751282AbbJ2KRy (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Oct 2015 06:17:54 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] cpuidle,x86: increase forced cut-off for polling to 20us To: riel@redhat.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <1446072416-13622-1-git-send-email-riel@redhat.com> <1446072416-13622-2-git-send-email-riel@redhat.com> Cc: arjan@linux.intel.com, khilman@ti.com, len.brown@intel.com, rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com, javi.merino@arm.com, tuukka.tikkanen@linaro.org From: Daniel Lezcano Message-ID: <5631F24E.2060508@linaro.org> Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2015 11:17:50 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.3.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1446072416-13622-2-git-send-email-riel@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 10/28/2015 11:46 PM, riel@redhat.com wrote: > From: Rik van Riel > > The cpuidle menu governor has a forced cut-off for polling at 5us, > in order to deal with firmware that gives the OS bad information > on cpuidle states, leading to the system spending way too much time > in polling. May be I am misunderstanding your explanation but it is not how I read the code. The default idle state is C1 (hlt) if no other states suits the constraint. If a timer is happening really soon, then set the default idle state to POLL if no other idle state suits the constraint. That applies only on x86. This is not related to break-even but exit latency. IMO, we should just drop this 5us and the POLL state selection in the menu governor as we have since a while hyper fast C1 exit. Except a few embedded processors where polling is not adequate. Furthermore, the number of times the poll state is selected vs the other states is negligible. I already raised this point but Len is opposed to the removal. Len ? Can you elaborate why you are opposed to this removal ? > However, at least one x86 CPU family (Atom) has chips that have > a 20us break-even point for C1. Forcing the polling cut-off to > less than that wastes performance and power. > > Increase the polling cut-off to 20us. > > Systems with a lower C1 latency will be found in the states table by > the menu governor, which will pick those states as appropriate. With this change, I believe the poll state will be selected more often (not too much certainly), hence implying a bigger energy consumption. And finally it may improve the situation for specific processor but deteriorate for other processors. Does anyone have the rational behind this '5' number ? why not '3' or '7' ? > Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel > --- > drivers/cpuidle/governors/menu.c | 2 +- > 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) > > diff --git a/drivers/cpuidle/governors/menu.c b/drivers/cpuidle/governors/menu.c > index 22e4463d1787..ecc242a586c9 100644 > --- a/drivers/cpuidle/governors/menu.c > +++ b/drivers/cpuidle/governors/menu.c > @@ -330,7 +330,7 @@ static int menu_select(struct cpuidle_driver *drv, struct cpuidle_device *dev) > * We want to default to C1 (hlt), not to busy polling > * unless the timer is happening really really soon. > */ > - if (data->next_timer_us > 5 && > + if (data->next_timer_us > 20 && > !drv->states[CPUIDLE_DRIVER_STATE_START].disabled && > dev->states_usage[CPUIDLE_DRIVER_STATE_START].disable == 0) > data->last_state_idx = CPUIDLE_DRIVER_STATE_START; > -- Linaro.org │ Open source software for ARM SoCs Follow Linaro: Facebook | Twitter | Blog