Message-ID: <51358117.9060902@semaphore.gr>
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2013 07:22:31 +0200
From: Stratos Karafotis <stratosk@semaphore.gr>
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To: Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>
CC: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>, cpufreq@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-pm@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH linux-next] cpufreq: conservative: Fix sampling_down_factor
 functionality
References: <51351CC3.4010301@semaphore.gr> <CAOh2x=m0KLbjGKvLvTH7-yQb4SU5-v=-r4Ba3LSZz=NvfvO6mg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAOh2x=m0KLbjGKvLvTH7-yQb4SU5-v=-r4Ba3LSZz=NvfvO6mg@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi Viresh,

On 03/05/2013 02:23 AM, Viresh Kumar wrote:> Interesting. Because it was removed earlier and no body complained :)
> 
> I got following from Documentation:
> 
> sampling_down_factor: this parameter controls the rate at which the
> kernel makes a decision on when to decrease the frequency while running
> at top speed. When set to 1 (the default) decisions to reevaluate load
> are made at the same interval regardless of current clock speed. But
> when set to greater than 1 (e.g. 100) it acts as a multiplier for the
> scheduling interval for reevaluating load when the CPU is at its top
> speed due to high load. This improves performance by reducing the overhead
> of load evaluation and helping the CPU stay at its top speed when truly
> busy, rather than shifting back and forth in speed. This tunable has no
> effect on behavior at lower speeds/lower CPU loads.
> 
> And i believe we are supposed to check if we are at the top speed or not.
> Over that i believe the code should be like:
> 
> While setting speed to top speed, set the timer to delay * sampling_down_factor,
> so that we actually don't reevaluate the load. What do you say?
> 

I had the same thoughts, but I saw the comments in the code:

/*
 * Every sampling_rate, we check, if current idle time is less than 20%
 * (default), then we try to increase frequency Every sampling_rate *
 * sampling_down_factor, we check, if current idle time is more than 80%, then
 * we try to decrease frequency
 *

Also checking the code before the commit 8e677ce83bf41ba9c74e5b6d9ee60b07d4e5ed93 you may see that sampling down factor works in this way.
So, I decided to keep the original functionality (also down_skip was already there unused).

Regards,
Stratos

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