Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752596Ab0DTApY (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:45:24 -0400 Received: from casper.infradead.org ([85.118.1.10]:36798 "EHLO casper.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751676Ab0DTApW (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:45:22 -0400 Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:47:02 -0700 From: Arjan van de Ven To: Tvrtko Ursulin Cc: "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "akpm@linux-foundation.org" , "mingo@elte.hu" , "peterz@infradead.org" , "tglx@linutronix.de" , "davej@redhat.com" , "cpufreq@vger.kernel.org" Subject: Re: [PATCH 7/7] ondemand: Solve the big performance issue with ondemand during disk IO Message-ID: <20100419174702.635ddad1@infradead.org> In-Reply-To: <201004191629.39339.tvrtko.ursulin@sophos.com> References: <20100418115949.7b743898@infradead.org> <201004191009.56859.tvrtko.ursulin@sophos.com> <20100419064617.519eb384@infradead.org> <201004191629.39339.tvrtko.ursulin@sophos.com> Organization: Intel X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.5 (GTK+ 2.16.6; i586-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by casper.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2084 Lines: 58 On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:29:39 +0100 Tvrtko Ursulin wrote: > On Monday 19 Apr 2010 14:46:17 Arjan van de Ven wrote: > > On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:09:55 +0100 > > > Or in other words, does a pure IO workload benefit from now higher > > > selected frequency? > > > > no. > > Mixed workloads do. > > but pure IO workloads also don't suffer since while idle, the > > voltage goes down anyway. > > You mean that higher frequency does not have effect on power use if > CPU is idle? Is that true for all/most processors? this is true for most processors that I'm aware of. there's exceptions for things like where the idle time is really short, where going up and down in voltage will take more energy than it'll save and such. > > > > One idea I had but a) never had time to implement it and b) was > > > not sure it would be accepted anyway, was to modify ondemand > > > governor to ramp up instantly, but slow down slowly (in a > > > configurable way). > > > > that's what ondemand does already. > > How and where in the code and how to enable that behaviour? From my > experiments frequency goes down to minimum as soon as load goes away. > What I was talking about is gradual lowering over a configurable > period. It is not power efficient, but it could be good for latency > in some workloads. it's not even good for that ;-( it's better then to stay high longer... at least on modern machines the inbetween states are pretty much either useless or actually energy hurting compared to the higher state. > > Tvrtko > > Sophos Plc, The Pentagon, Abingdon Science Park, Abingdon, OX14 3YP, > United Kingdom. Company Reg No 2096520. VAT Reg No GB 348 3873 20. -- Arjan van de Ven Intel Open Source Technology Centre For development, discussion and tips for power savings, visit http://www.lesswatts.org -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/