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From:   Valentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@arm.com>
To:     Benjamin GAIGNARD <benjamin.gaignard@st.com>
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Subject: Re: [RFC RESEND 0/3] Introduce cpufreq minimum load QoS
In-reply-to: <ab4340c0-bda3-e752-9073-e162e6325bb1@st.com>
Date:   Wed, 27 May 2020 13:14:24 +0100
Message-ID: <jhjwo4xinhb.mognet@arm.com>
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On 27/05/20 12:17, Benjamin GAIGNARD wrote:
> On 5/27/20 12:09 PM, Valentin Schneider wrote:
>> Hi Benjamin,
>>
>> On 26/05/20 16:16, Benjamin Gaignard wrote:
>>> A first round [1] of discussions and suggestions have already be done on
>>> this series but without found a solution to the problem. I resend it to
>>> progress on this topic.
>>>
>> Apologies for sleeping on that previous thread.
>>
>> So what had been suggested over there was to use uclamp to boost the
>> frequency of the handling thread; however if you use threaded IRQs you
>> get RT threads, which already get the max frequency by default (at least
>> with schedutil).
>>
>> Does that not work for you, and if so, why?
>
> That doesn't work because almost everything is done by the hardware blocks
> without charge the CPU so the thread isn't running.

I'm not sure I follow; the frequency of the CPU doesn't matter while
your hardware blocks are spinning, right? AIUI what matters is running
your interrupt handler / action at max freq, which you get if you use
threaded IRQs and schedutil.

I think it would help if you could clarify which tasks / parts of your
pipeline you need running at high frequencies. The point is that setting
a QoS request affects all tasks, whereas we could be smarter and only
boost the required tasks.

> I have done the
> tests with schedutil
> and ondemand scheduler (which is the one I'm targeting). I have no
> issues when using
> performance scheduler because it always keep the highest frequencies.
>
>
>>
>>> When start streaming from the sensor the CPU load could remain very low
>>> because almost all the capture pipeline is done in hardware (i.e. without
>>> using the CPU) and let believe to cpufreq governor that it could use lower
>>> frequencies. If the governor decides to use a too low frequency that
>>> becomes a problem when we need to acknowledge the interrupt during the
>>> blanking time.
>>> The delay to ack the interrupt and perform all the other actions before
>>> the next frame is very short and doesn't allow to the cpufreq governor to
>>> provide the required burst of power. That led to drop the half of the frames.
>>>
>>> To avoid this problem, DCMI driver informs the cpufreq governors by adding
>>> a cpufreq minimum load QoS resquest.
>>>
>>> Benjamin
>>>
>>> [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/4/24/360
>>>
>>> Benjamin Gaignard (3):
>>>    PM: QoS: Introduce cpufreq minimum load QoS
>>>    cpufreq: governor: Use minimum load QoS
>>>    media: stm32-dcmi: Inform cpufreq governors about cpu load needs
>>>
>>>   drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_governor.c        |   5 +
>>>   drivers/media/platform/stm32/stm32-dcmi.c |   8 ++
>>>   include/linux/pm_qos.h                    |  12 ++
>>>   kernel/power/qos.c                        | 213 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>   4 files changed, 238 insertions(+)