Re: [RFC PATCH 06/16] arm: topology: Define TC2 sched energy and provide it to scheduler

[Yuyang Du]

On Fri, Jun 06, 2014 at 12:50:36PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > Voltage is combined with frequency, roughly, voltage is proportional
> > to freuquecy, so roughly, power is proportionaly to voltage^3. You
> 
> P ~ V^2, last time I checked.
> 
> > can't say which is more important, or there is no reason to raise
> > voltage without raising frequency.
> 
> Well, some chips have far fewer voltage steps than freq steps; or,
> differently put, they have multiple freq steps for a single voltage
> level.
> 
> And since the power (Watts) is proportional to Voltage squared, its the
> biggest term.
> 
> If you have a distinct voltage level for each freq, it all doesn't
> matter.
> 

Ok. I think we understand each other. But one more thing, I said P ~ V^3,
because P ~ V^2*f and f ~ V, so P ~ V^3. Maybe some frequencies share the same
voltage, but you can still safely assume V changes with f in general, and it
will be more and more so, since we do need finer control over power consumption.

> Sure, but realize that we must fully understand this governor and
> integrate it in the scheduler if we're to attain the goal of IPC/watt
> optimized scheduling behaviour.
> 

Attain the goal of IPC/watt optimized?

I don't see how it can be done like this. As I said, what is unknown for
prediction is perf scaling *and* changing workload. So the challenge for pstate
control is in both. But I see more chanllenge in the changing workload than
in the performance scaling or the resulting IPC impact (if workload is
fixed).

Currently, all freq governors take CPU utilization (load%) as the indicator
(target), which can server both: workload and perf scaling.

As for IPC/watt optimized, I don't see how it can be practical. Too micro to
be used for the general well-being?

> So you (or rather Intel in general) will have to be very explicit on how
> their stuff works and can no longer hide in some driver and do magic.
> The same is true for all other vendors for that matter.
> 
> If you (vendors, not Yuyang in specific) do not want to play (and be
> explicit and expose how your hardware functions) then you simply will
> not get power efficient scheduling full stop.
> 
> There's no rocks to hide under, no magic veils to hide behind. You tell
> _in_public_ or you get nothing.

Better communication is good, especially for our increasingly iterated
products because the changing products do incur noises and inconsistency
in detail.
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