Fighting for the power.

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 15:24:27 +0300
> From: Alexander Motin <mav at FreeBSD.org>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> 
> Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 01:18 +0300, Alexander Motin wrote:
> >>   - C3 state allows CPU completely stop all internal clocks, reduce
> >> voltage and disconnect from system bus. This state gives additional
> >> power saving effect, but it is not cheap and require trade-offs.
> >> As soon as CPU is completely stopped in C3 state, local APIC timers in
> >> each CPU core, used by FreeBSD as event sources on SMP, are not
> >> functioning. It stops system time, breaks scheduling that makes system
> >> close to dead. 
> > Did you try to see whether putting one of the cores in C3 state by doing
> > something like
> > 
> > dev.cpu.1.cx_lowest=C3
> > 
> > makes any difference?
> > 
> > # sysctl dev.cpu | grep cx_usage
> > dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 0.00% 100.00% 0.00%
> > dev.cpu.1.cx_usage: 0.00% 5.18% 94.81%
> 
> I did. As soon as first CPU core is not in C3 state, second core unable 
> to enter C3 completely and disconnect from the bus, as cores are sharing 
> common resources. Such technique allows to avoid LAPIC timer problems, 
> but I haven't noticed any effect from this on CPU idle power. The only 
> difference I have noticed was in the case, when first core is busy. C3 
> on second idle core then somehow reduces summary consumption a bit.
> 
> In other words, C3 state should be active on both cores simultaneously 
> to give real effect.

It is important to be aware that the presence of USB will keep a system
from entering C3. Either build a kernel without USB and load it only
whan needed or run 8-CURRENT with the USB2 stack which is purported to
fix this problem. (I have no systems running CURRENT, so I can't confirm
that USB2 fixes the problem.)
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751