Okay, this is my attempt to summarize what we have been discussing. But first: There is a dev_pm_skip_resume() helper routine which subsystems can call to see whether resume-side _early and _noirq driver callbacks should be skipped. But there is no corresponding dev_pm_skip_suspend() helper routine. Let's add one, or rename dev_pm_smart_suspend_and_suspended() to dev_pm_skip_suspend(). Given that, here's my understanding of what should happen. (I'm assuming the direct_complete mechanism is not being used.) This tries to describe what we _want_ to happen, which is not always the same as what the current code actually _does_. During the suspend side, for each of the {suspend,freeze,poweroff}_{late,noirq} phases: If dev_pm_skip_suspend() returns true then the subsystem should not invoke the driver's callback, and if there is no subsystem callback then the core will not invoke the driver's callback. During the resume side, for each of the {resume,thaw,restore}_{early,noirq} phases: If dev_pm_skip_resume() returns true then the subsystem should not invoke the driver's callback, and if there is no subsystem callback then the core will not invoke the driver's callback. dev_pm_skip_suspend() will return "true" if SMART_SUSPEND is set and the device's runtime status is "suspended". power.must_resume gets set following the suspend-side _noirq phase if power.usage_count > 1 (indicating the device was in active use before the start of the sleep transition) or power.must_resume is set for any of the device's dependents. dev_pm_skip_resume() will return "false" if the current transition is RESTORE or power.must_resume is set. Otherwise: It will return true if the current transition is THAW, SMART_SUSPEND is set, and the device's runtime status is "suspended". It will return "true" if the current transition is RESUME, SMART_SUSPEND and MAY_SKIP_RESUME are both set, and the device's runtime status is "suspended". For a RESUME transition, it will also return "true" if MAY_SKIP_RESUME and power.may_skip_resume are both set, regardless of SMART_SUSPEND or the current runtime status. At the start of the {resume,thaw,restore}_noirq phase, if dev_pm_skip_resume() returns true then the core will set the runtime status to "suspended". Otherwise it will set the runtime status to "active". If this is not what the subsystem or driver wants, it must update the runtime status itself. Comments and differences with respect to the code in your pm-sleep-core branch: I'm not sure whether we should specify other conditions for setting power.must_resume. dev_pm_skip_resume() doesn't compute the value described above. I'm pretty sure the existing code is wrong. device_resume_noirq() checks dev_pm_smart_suspend_and_suspended() before setting the runtime PM status to "active", contrary to the text above. The difference shows up in the case where SMART_SUSPEND is clear but the runtime PM status is "suspended". Don't we want to set the status to "active" in this case? Or is there some need to accomodate legacy drivers here? In any case, wouldn't it be good enough to check just the SMART_SUSPEND flag? __device_suspend_late() sets power.may_skip_resume, contrary to the comment in include/linux/pm.h: That flag is supposed to be set by subsystems, not the core. I'm not at all sure that this algorithm won't run into trouble at some point when it tries to set a device's runtime status to "active" but the parent's status is set to "suspended". And I'm not sure this problem can be fixed by adjusting power.must_resume. Alan Stern