Re: [intel-pstate driver regression] processor frequency very high even if in idle

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:17 PM, JÃrg Otte <jrg.otte@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 2016-03-29 23:34 GMT+02:00 Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> On Tuesday, March 29, 2016 07:32:27 PM JÃrg Otte wrote:
>>> 2016-03-29 19:24 GMT+02:00 JÃrg Otte <jrg.otte@xxxxxxxxx>:
>>> > in v4.5 and earlier intel-pstate downscaled idle processors (load
>>> > 0.1-0.2%) to minumum frequency, in my case 800MHz.
>>> >
>>> > Now in v4.6-rc1 the characteristic has dramatically changed. If in
>>> > idle the processor frequency is more or less a few MHz around 2500Mhz.
>>> > This is the maximum non turbo frequency.
>>> >
>>> > No difference between powersafe or performance governor.
>>> >
>>> > I currently use acpi_cpufreq which works as usual.
>>> >
>>> > Processor:
>>> > Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200M CPU @ 2.50GHz (family: 0x6, model: 0x3c,
>>> > stepping: 0x3)
>>> >
>>> > Last known good kernel is: 4.5.0-01127-g9256d5a
>>> > First known bad kernel is: 4.5.0-02535-g09fd671
>>> >
>>> > There is
>>> > commit 277edba Merge tag 'pm+acpi-4.6-rc1-1' of
>>> > git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux-pm
>>> > in between, which brought a few changes in intel_pstate.
>>
>> Can you please check commit a4675fbc4a7a (cpufreq: intel_pstate: Replace timers
>> with utilization update callbacks)?
>>
> Yes , this solved the problem for me.
> I had to resolve some conflicts myself when reverting that
> commit. Hard work :).

Thanks for doing this.  Can you please post the revert patch you have used?

> Here is a 10-seconds trace of the used frequencies when
> in "desktop-idle":
>
> driver          cpu0 cpu1 cpu2 cpu3
> -------------------------------------
> intel_pstate (  800  928  941 1200) MHz   load:( 0.2)%
> intel_pstate (  800  928 1181 1800) MHz   load:( 0.0)%
> intel_pstate ( 1675 1576 1347  800) MHz   load:( 0.0)%
> intel_pstate ( 1198 1576  842  800) MHz   load:( 0.5)%
> intel_pstate (  800 1181 1113 1600) MHz   load:( 0.0)%
> intel_pstate (  808 1181  805  800) MHz   load:( 0.5)%
> intel_pstate (  844 1191  900 1082) MHz   load:( 0.3)%
> intel_pstate (  816 1191  800  800) MHz   load:( 0.0)%
> intel_pstate (  800  905  892 1082) MHz   load:( 0.2)%
> intel_pstate (  945  905 1340  800) MHz   load:( 0.3)%

Please also run turbostat with and without your revert patch applied.

Thanks,
Rafael