Hi Guenter,
Thanks for your quick response. Please see my answers in-line.
Thanks,
Srinivas
On 04/05/2013 08:24 PM, Guenter Roeck wrote:
On Thu, Apr 04, 2013 at 01:09:20PM -0700, Srinivas Pandruvada wrote:
On 04/04/2013 12:43 PM, Guenter Roeck wrote:
On Thu, Apr 04, 2013 at 12:11:25PM -0700, Srinivas Pandruvada wrote:
This is clear that there is reluctance in adding thresholds in coretemp sysfs,
during previous attempts. Proably because of lake of use cases.
But this time use case may be more compelling.
We have many small form factor devices like ultrabooks, slate PCs in the market.
Unfortunately these devices reach maximum temperature with relatively less
workloads, causing BIOS to do thermal throttling. There are real performance
issues due to aggressive BIOS action to control thermals and also thermal breakdown
in some cases.
Even the most expensive laptops, don't have correct ACPI thermal configuration,
so that kernel thermal driver can act. In some case even the trip point is higher
than critical temperature setting.
Intel has developed several drivers, which can be used to cool the system very efficiently.
They include RAPL based cooling driver, Powerclamp driver and P state driver.
To utilize these cooling device a closed loop user mode program is required, which
will utilize these method and dynamically compensate for high CPU temperatures,
without relying on any configuration data.
One such solution is developed is "Linux thermal daemon". More details can be
obtained from
"https://github.com/01org/thermal_daemon/blob/master/ThermalDaemon_Introduction.pdf";.
This daemon polls for cpu temperature and apply compensation once the CPU reach target
temperature.
This polling can be mostly avoided, by getting notification for the temperature, where
it needs to wake up and get ready for apply compensation. In most of the normal use
cases, there may not be any threshold events. So very minimal number of user space
notification for thermal thresholds.
This patch adds two entries to coretemp sysfs.
tempX_notify_threshold_1
tempX_notify_threshold_2
These two settings acts on "Package level", not on core level. So it will only appear
if there is support for package temperature. Many of recent Intel processors, support
package temperatures
When any valid value is written to these files, it will directly set corresponding CPU MSR,
in the corresponding package and read back directly from MSR. Since package MSR, affects
all cores in package, setting will be applicable to all CPU's in the package minimizing
read, writes and notifications. Also package threshold interrupts are enabled only when,
a non zero value is written to thresholds.
Once thresholds are violated, it uses a rate control of 5 seconds, reducing the number
of interrupts, when temperature is hanging around trip point. Using the sticky log bit,
it sends kboject uevent change notification for corresponding package sysfs.
Once the thermal daemon receives notification, it can change to new threshold or act
immediately to reduce CPU temperature.
Srinivas Pandruvada (4):
x86, mcheck, therm_throt: Process package thresholds
hwmon: (coretemp) Add threshold support
hwmon: (coretemp) : Add notification support
drivers/hwmon/coretemp : Debug fs interface
arch/x86/include/asm/mce.h | 7 +
arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mcheck/therm_throt.c | 50 ++++-
drivers/hwmon/coretemp.c | 319 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
3 files changed, 361 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)
Key question: Why does the thermal subsystem not work for you ?
Thermal is bigger issue in Ultrabooks, Slate PCs and other small
form factor devices.
Linux ACPI thermal driver depends on ACPI configuration to activate
active/passive control. So if you have garbage data or not optimized
data, the current Linux driver can't control thermals. There are
multiple platforms with bad ACPI data. Some of them have "ACPI
threshold > critical temp"
I wasn't talking about ACPI, I was talking about the Linux thermal subsystem
in drivers/thermal. There is no single mention of "ACPI" in that directory.
<Thermal drivers also resides outside this directory. ACPI also
registers as thermal zone similar to other example you mentioned below.
ACPI is the only means to configure per platform thermal trip points in
thermal zones in PC platform.
>
Currently all these systems, rely on BIOS fan and T state control.
Once T states are used the performance gets hurt. Also we had cases
of thermal breakdown.
In addition there are several new methods to cool the system,
developed by Intel and are in latest Linux kernel. They are
specially designed to cool the system when needed.
So, again, why can't you use the thermal subsystem ?
<Thermal zone needs to show temperature. This will be duplicate what
coretemp.X is showing. I want to prevent identical information be
displayed at two different sysfs>
Also the db8500 example you are giving, uses a pre-configured thresholds
loaded during probe().
There is no thermal ABI to set thresholds at run time. Basically when a
temperature is above a trip temp, corresponding cooling devices will be
activated.
So I still I have to write a platform driver to set thresholds, and then
registers with thermal zone. This will show as another packagetemp.x at
sysfs like coretemp.x.
So please let me know how to set dynamic thresholds?
>
The db8500_thermal driver in drivers/thermal is quite similar to what
you try to accomplish. I would suggest to look into it and use a similar
approach. I really don't see how this fits into the hwmon subsystem.
<Is this logic based on that hwmon shouldn't have write interface and
used only for monitoring? I think some hwmon driver already have write
interface like gpiofan.>
Thanks,
Guenter
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