Re: [PATCH RFC] iwlwifi: add basic runtime PM support

["Yan, Zheng" <zheng.z.yan@intel.com>]

On 01/09/2012 09:05 AM, Guy, Wey-Yi wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-01-09 at 09:55 +0800, Yan, Zheng wrote:
>> On 01/09/2012 08:34 AM, Guy, Wey-Yi wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2012-01-09 at 09:01 +0800, Yan, Zheng wrote:
>>>> On 01/06/2012 05:47 PM, Johannes Berg wrote:
>>>>> [add linux-wireless]
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 2012-01-06 at 10:41 +0800, Yan, Zheng wrote:
>>>>>> This simple patch adds open/close based runtime PM support to the iwlwifi driver.
>>>>>> Namely, make the driver suspend the device after shutting down the interface and
>>>>>> resume the device when activating the interface. In my test, suspending the device
>>>>>> can save about 0.4 watt power. The shortcoming is that the device no longer generate
>>>>>> rfkill changes interrupt.
>>>>>
>>>>> NACK due to that last sentence. There's no way we can live with that in
>>>>> the general case -- and your patch isn't even configurable afaict. And
>>>>> I'm sure polling the rfkill flag would use just as much energy.
>>>>>
>>>> It's configurable, runtime PM is disabled by default.
>>>
>>> Somehow I miss it, how you configure it?
>>>
>> change the value of /sys/devices/.../power/control to auto to enable the runtime PM.
>> (e.g echo auto > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:02:00.0/power/control)
> 
> I am not sure it is acceptable, how you expect user figure out the pci
> space especially the NIC can be in any of the PCI slots.
> 
>>
>>>>
>>>>> There might be some value in this in a system that doesn't have a hard
>>>>> rfkill line, but that means this needs to be configurable since the
>>>>> device can't know whether there's a button or not [1].
>>>>>
>>>> The patch targets system that only use software rfkill
>>>
>>> How you control that?  
>> I can't. Our team is working on runtime PM project, the purpose of the patch is
>> more or less to demonstrate how much power can be saved.
>>
> I understand, but unless we figure out either make rkill interrupt works
> in runtime PM, or figure out the platform does not has HW RFKILL
> automatically, I don't see how this patch can upstream without generate
> a lot of issues and bug reports.
> 
Thank you for the suggestion.

Yan, Zheng