Re: [RFC] Run-time PM framework (was: Re: [patch update] PM: Introducecore framework for run-time PM of I/O devices (rev. 6))

[Alan Stern]

On Sat, 4 Jul 2009, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:

> > > I don't really like the async_action idea, as you might have noticed.
> > 
> > Do you mean that you don't like the field, or that you don't like its name?
> 
> The name, actually.  That's because I'd like to use the values for something
> that's not 'async' in substance (more on that later).

Okay.  I don't care about the name.

> It occured to me in the meantime that if we added a 'request_pending' (or
> 'work_pending' or whatever similar) flag to the above, we could avoid using
> cancel_work().  Namely, if 'request_pending' indicates that there's a work item
> queued up, we could change 'request type' to NONE in case we didn't want the
> work function to do anything.  Then, the work function would just unset
> 'request_pending' and quit if 'request type' is NONE.

You mean use request_pending to decide whether to call cancel_work, 
instead of looking at request_type?  That's right.

As for whether or not we should actually call cancel_work...  Which is 
more expensive: Calling cancel_work when no work is pending, or letting 
the work item run when it doesn't have anything to do?  Probably the 
latter.

> I generally like the idea of changing 'request type' on the fly once we've
> noticed that the currently pending request should be replaced by another one.

Me too.

> That would require us to introduce a big idle-suspend-resume function
> choosing the callback to run based on 'request type', which would be quite
> complicated.

It doesn't have to be very big or complicated:

	spin_lock_irq(&dev->power.lock);
	switch (dev->power.request_type) {
	case RPM_REQ_SUSPEND:
		__pm_runtime_suspend(dev, false);
		break;
	case RPM_REQ_RESUME:
		__pm_runtime_resume(dev, false);
		break;
	case RPM_REQ_IDLE:
		__pm_runtime_idle(dev, false);
		break;
	default:
	}
	spin_unlock_irq(&dev->power.lock);

It would be necessary to change the __pm_runtime_* routines, since they
would now have to be called with the lock held.

>  But that function could also be used for the 'synchronous'
> operations, so perhaps it's worth trying?
> 
> Such a function can take two arguments, dev and request, where the second
> one determines the callback to run.  It can take the same values as 'request
> type', where NONE means "you've been called from the workqueue, use 'request
> type' from dev to check what to do", but your ASYNC_* names are not really
> suitable here. :-)

I don't see any advantage in that approach.  The pm_runtime_* functions
already know what they want to do.  Why encode it in a request argument
only to decode it again?


> > > That's fine, we'd also need to wait for running callbacks to
> > > finish too.  And I'm still not convinced if we should preserve
> > > requests queued up before the system sleep.  Or keep the suspend
> > > timer running for that matter.
> > 
> > This all does into the "to-be-determined" category.  :-)
> 
> Well, I'd like to choose something to start with.

Pending suspends and the suspend timer don't matter much; we can cancel
them because they ought to get resubmitted after the system wakes up.  
Pending resumes are more difficult; depending on how they are treated
they could morph into immediate wakeup requests.

Perhaps even more tricky is how to handle things like the ACPI suspend
calls when the device is already runtime-suspended.  I don't know what 
we should do about that.


> > > pm_schedule_suspend()
> > >   * return -EINVAL if 'disabled' is set or 'runtime_error' is set
> > >   * return -EAGAIN if 'usage_count' > 0 or 'child_count' > 0
> > >   * return -EALREADY if 'runtime status' is RPM_SUSPENDED
> > >   * return -EINPROGRESS if 'runtime status' is RPM_SUSPENDING
> > 
> > The last two aren't right.  If the status is RPM_SUSPENDED or
> > RPM_SUSPENDING, cancel any pending work and set the type to
> > RPM_REQ_NONE before returning.  In other words, cancel a possible 
> > pending resume request.
> 
> Wy do you think the possible pending resume request should be canceled?

It's part of the "most recent request wins" approach.

> I don't really agree here.  Resume request really means there's data to
> process, so we shouldn't cancel pending resume requests IMO.
> 
> The driver should be given a chance to process data in ->runtime_resume()
> even if it doesn't use the usage counter.  Otherwise, the usage counter would
> always have to be used along with resume requests, so having
> pm_request_resume() that doesn't increment the usage counter would really be
> pointless.

All right, I'll go along with this.  So instead of "most recent request 
wins", we have something like this:

	Resume requests (queued or in progress) override suspend and 
	idle requests (sync or async).

	Suspend requests (queued or in progress, but not unexpired)
	override idle requests (sync or async).

But this statement might not be precise enough, and I'm too tired to
think through all the ramifications right now.


> > > pm_request_suspend()
> > >   * return if 'disabled' is set or 'runtime_error' is set
> > >   * return if 'usage_count' > 0 or 'child_count' > 0
> > >   * return if 'runtime status' is RPM_SUSPENDING or RPM_SUSPENDED
> > 
> > First cancel a possible pending resume request.
> 
> I disagree.

This is the same as the above, right?

> > If the status is RPM_RESUMING or RPM_ACTIVE, cancel a possible pending 
> > timer (and set time_expiration to 0).
> 
> We're the timer function, so either the timer is not pending, or we've been
> executed too early.

Oh, okay.  I thought perhaps you might have wanted to export
pm_request_suspend.  But this is really supposed to be just the timer 
handler.


> > > pm_request_resume()
> > >   * return -EINVAL if 'disabled' is set or 'runtime_error' is set
> > >   * return -EINPROGRESS if 'runtime status' is RPM_RESUMING
> > 
> > Or RPM_ACTIVE.
> 
> Maybe return 1 in that case?

Yes.

> > >   * return -EALREADY if 'request type' is RPM_REQ_RESUME
> > 
> > For these last two, first cancel a possible pending suspend request
> > and a possible timer.
> 
> Possible timer only, I think.  if 'request type' is RESUME, there can't be
> suspend request pending.

But there can be if the status is RPM_ACTIVE.  So okay, if the status 
isn't RPM_RESUMING or RPM_ACTIVE and request_type is RPM_REQ_RESUME, 
then return 0.


> > Similar outlines apply for pm_runtime_suspend, pm_runtime_resume, and
> > pm_runtime_idle.  There is an extra requirement: When a suspend or
> > resume is over, if 'request type' is set then schedule the work item.  
> > Doing things this way allows the workqueue thread to avoid waiting
> > around for the suspend or resume to finish.
> 
> I agree except that I would like suspends to just fail when the status is
> RPM_RESUMING.  The reason is that a sloppily written driver could enter a
> busy-loop of suspending-resuming the device, without the possibility to process
> data, if there's full symmetry between suspend and resume.  So, I'd like to
> break that symmetry and make resume operations privileged with respect to
> suspend and idle notifications.  

This follows from the new precedence rule.

Alan Stern

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