From 62d6ae880e3e76098d5e345decd2dce443975889 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Carsten Emde Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:34:10 +0000 Subject: 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 Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki --- Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt | 10 +++++++++- 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'Documentation/cpuidle') diff --git a/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt b/Documentation/cpuidle/sysfs.txt index 9d28a3406e7..b6f44f490ed 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. -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2