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authorCarsten Emde <C.Emde@osadl.org>2012-07-19 20:34:10 +0000
committerRafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>2012-09-04 01:35:44 +0200
commit62d6ae880e3e76098d5e345decd2dce443975889 (patch)
tree5788868e10c08030c5981adae8f5dfd6306b2608 /Documentation
parent4cbe5a555fa58a79b6ecbb6c531b8bab0650778d (diff)
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Honor state disabling in the cpuidle ladder governor
There are two cpuidle governors ladder and menu. While the ladder governor is always available, if CONFIG_CPU_IDLE is selected, the menu governor additionally requires CONFIG_NO_HZ. A particular C state can be disabled by writing to the sysfs file /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuN/cpuidle/stateN/disable, but this mechanism is only implemented in the menu governor. Thus, in a system where CONFIG_NO_HZ is not selected, the ladder governor becomes default and always will walk through all sleep states - irrespective of whether the C state was disabled via sysfs or not. The only way to select a specific C state was to write the related latency to /dev/cpu_dma_latency and keep the file open as long as this setting was required - not very practical and not suitable for setting a single core in an SMP system. With this patch, the ladder governor only will promote to the next C state, if it has not been disabled, and it will demote, if the current C state was disabled. Note that the patch does not make the setting of the sysfs variable "disable" coherent, i.e. if one is disabling a light state, then all deeper states are disabled as well, but the "disable" variable does not reflect it. Likewise, if one enables a deep state but a lighter state still is disabled, then this has no effect. A related section has been added to the documentation. Signed-off-by: Carsten Emde <C.Emde@osadl.org> Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt10
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt b/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt
index 9d28a34..b6f44f4 100644
--- a/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt
@@ -76,9 +76,17 @@ total 0
* desc : Small description about the idle state (string)
-* disable : Option to disable this idle state (bool)
+* disable : Option to disable this idle state (bool) -> see note below
* latency : Latency to exit out of this idle state (in microseconds)
* name : Name of the idle state (string)
* power : Power consumed while in this idle state (in milliwatts)
* time : Total time spent in this idle state (in microseconds)
* usage : Number of times this state was entered (count)
+
+Note:
+The behavior and the effect of the disable variable depends on the
+implementation of a particular governor. In the ladder governor, for
+example, it is not coherent, i.e. if one is disabling a light state,
+then all deeper states are disabled as well, but the disable variable
+does not reflect it. Likewise, if one enables a deep state but a lighter
+state still is disabled, then this has no effect.