Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 3/8] ACPI: processor: add__acpi_processor_[un]register_driver helpers.

From: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk
Date: Tue Jan 17 2012 - 12:16:31 EST


> > I was trying to figure out how difficult it would be to just bring Pxx states to
> > the Xen hypervisor using the existing ACPI interfaces. And while it did not pass
> > all the _Pxx states (seems that all the _PCT, _PSS, _PSD, _PPC flags need to
> > be enabled in the hypercall to make this work), it demonstrates what I had in
> > mind.

.. snip..
> > /* TODO: Under Xen, the C-states information is not present.
> > * Figure out why. */
>
> it's possible related to this long thread:
>
> http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2011-08/msg00511.html
>
> IOW, Xen doesn't export mwait capability to dom0, which impacts _PDC setting.
> Final solution is to have a para-virtualized PDC call for that.

Aaah. Let me play with that a bit. Thanks for the pointer.

.. snip..
> the prerequisites for this module to work correctly, is that dom0 has the right
> configurations to have all necessary Cx/Px information ready before this
> module is loaded. That may mean enabling full CONFIG_CPU_IDLE and CONFIG_CPUFREQ,

Right.
> which in current form may add some negative impact, e.g. dom0 will try to control
> Px/Cx to conflict with Xen. So some tweaks may be required in that part.

Yup. Hadn't even looked at the cpufreq tries to do yet.
>
> given our purpose now, is to come up a cleaner approach which tolerate some
> assumptions (e.g. #VCPU of dom0 == #PCPU), there's another option following this
> trend (perhaps compensate your idea). We can register a Xen-cpuidle and
> xen-cpufreq driver to current Linux cpuidle and cpufreq framework, which plays
> mainly two roles:
> - a dummy driver to prevent dom0 touching actual Px/Cx
> - parse ACPI Cx/Px information to Xen, in a similar way you did above

Yeah, I like where you are heading.
>
> there may have some other trickiness, but the majority code will be self-contained.

<nods>
>
> Thanks
> Kevin
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-acpi" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/