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authorRafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>2017-03-23 01:58:57 +0300
committerRafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>2017-03-24 05:04:31 +0300
commitc5a2ee7dde893e0a06044e75c16711f08d5c011d (patch)
tree363d163e5233a4ed226a2febeceb5c42cc883963 /kernel
parent553953453b4b64fbccba31691257d006cee36613 (diff)
downloadlinux-c5a2ee7dde893e0a06044e75c16711f08d5c011d.tar.xz
cpufreq: intel_pstate: Active mode P-state limits rework
The coordination of P-state limits used by intel_pstate in the active mode (ie. by default) is problematic, because it synchronizes all of the limits (ie. the global ones and the per-policy ones) so as to use one common pair of P-state limits (min and max) across all CPUs in the system. The drawbacks of that are as follows: - If P-states are coordinated in hardware, it is not necessary to coordinate them in software on top of that, so in that case all of the above activity is in vain. - If P-states are not coordinated in hardware, then the processor is actually capable of setting different P-states for different CPUs and coordinating them at the software level simply doesn't allow that capability to be utilized. - The coordination works in such a way that setting a per-policy limit (eg. scaling_max_freq) for one CPU causes the common effective limit to change (and it will affect all of the other CPUs too), but subsequent reads from the corresponding sysfs attributes for the other CPUs will return stale values (which is confusing). - Reads from the global P-state limit attributes, min_perf_pct and max_perf_pct, return the effective common values and not the last values set through these attributes. However, the last values set through these attributes become hard limits that cannot be exceeded by writes to scaling_min_freq and scaling_max_freq, respectively, and they are not exposed, so essentially users have to remember what they are. All of that is painful enough to warrant a change of the management of P-state limits in the active mode. To that end, redesign the active mode P-state limits management in intel_pstate in accordance with the following rules: (1) All CPUs are affected by the global limits (that is, none of them can be requested to run faster than the global max and none of them can be requested to run slower than the global min). (2) Each individual CPU is affected by its own per-policy limits (that is, it cannot be requested to run faster than its own per-policy max and it cannot be requested to run slower than its own per-policy min). (3) The global and per-policy limits can be set independently. Also, the global maximum and minimum P-state limits will be always expressed as percentages of the maximum supported turbo P-state. Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
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