Re: [PATCH 8/8] intel_idle: create a native cpuidle driver forselect intel processors

[Chase Douglas]

On Fri, 2010-05-28 at 00:16 -0400, Len Brown wrote:
> > I see that you have updated this code in your tree to disable C4 and C6
> > on atom. This has piqued my curiosity. I've now seen 2 atom netbooks
> > from different OEMs that hide C4 when you plug the power in. After the
> > first machine I thought, "must be a BIOS/ACPI bug," but now I'm
> > beginning to wonder if there's some issue with atom C4 states? That's
> > beside the fact that I've not seen C6 on either machine at all. Do you
> > have any insight?
> 
> The reasoning behind ACPI taking deep C-states away
> when on AC is the assumption that users on AC
> care more about low latency and high performance
> than they care about power savings, heat, and noise.

Maybe they forgot that a netbook is still a *lap*top when they did this,
cause I can't keep mine on my lap when it's plugged in :). The CPU idles
at 60 centigrade when powered on, and drops to a manageable 30-ish
centigrade when running on battery.

> So my intent is to give Linux control over this decision,
> via PM_QOS or otherwise.  At the moment C4 is commented out
> because when i first tested it failed the lapic timer workaround.

I am looking forward to testing out these changes on my netbook once
this issue get sorted out!

-- Chase

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