Re: [RFC PATCH v3 03/10] PM: Introduce an Energy Model management framework

[Quentin Perret]

On Friday 08 Jun 2018 at 18:39:56 (+0200), Dietmar Eggemann wrote:
> On 06/08/2018 03:11 PM, Quentin Perret wrote:
> > On Friday 08 Jun 2018 at 14:39:33 (+0200), Dietmar Eggemann wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > > > > Even though we would be forced to get cpufreq's related cpumask from
> > > > > somewhere.
> > > > 
> > > > That's the easy part. The difficult part is, where do you get power
> > > > values from ? You have to let the lower layers register those values
> > > > in a centralized location on a voluntary basis. And then it becomes easy
> > > > for consumers to access that data, because they know where it is.
> > > 
> > > The code in the arch could use the same struct em_data_callback em_cb = {
> > > &dev_pm_opp_of_estimate_power } that the cpufreq driver is currently using?
> > 
> > How do you know from the arch code if you should get power from DT
> > with dev_pm_opp_of_estimate_power or use another callback that reads
> > power from firmware (SCMI) ?
> 
> Ah, ok, cpufreq dt, scpi and arm_big_little are dt, cpufreq scmi can be
> different ...
> 
> > 
> > I don't think it is reasonable to assume a single source of information for
> > an arch. It is is already an incorrect assumption even if just you look at
> > the Arm world.
> 
> Ok, I see.
> 
> > 
> > > > Again, I don't think that's possible. You have to let the lower layers
> > > > tell you where the power values come from, at the very least. You could
> > > > let the archs do that aggregation I suppose, but I don't really see the
> > > > benefit over one centralized framework with a generic interface ...
> > > > What's your opinion ?
> > > 
> > > Don't understand the '... let the lower layers tell you where the power
> > > values come from ...' part. Where is the difference whether the arch or the
> > > cpufreq driver uses em_data_callback?
> > 
> > Because different CPUFreq drivers can be used for one arch. There are
> > different CPUFreq drivers because there are different ways of getting
> > information about the platform, even just for the Arm world (DT, SCPI,
> > SCMI, ...). It's the same thing for power values, they don't necessarily
> > come from DT.
> 
> scpi is dt ? At least scpi-cpufreq.c uses this dev_pm_opp_of_estimate_power
> too.

Hrmpf, SCPI isn't really DT. The voltage and freq values don't come from
DT at least. The reason dev_pm_opp_of_estimate_power() is in PM_OPP in my
tree is precisely because PM_OPP take cares about the SCPI/DT abstraction
for me. That makes it easier to factorize a bit of code between cpufreq-dt
and scpi-cpufreq to compute the CVVf thing, but that's a different story,
and could be implemented differently. The common thing between the two is
that the "C" value is in DT. The rest is fairly different.

> 
> > The point of having a centralized EM framework with a standardized
> > callback prototype is flexibility. You can implement a callback that
> > estimates power from the DT. You can implement a callback that reads
> > power from firmware. But you can also have a completely ad-hoc EM
> > provider in a module if you like. All you have to do to provide data to
> > the framework is respect the callback API.
> 
> IMHO, this idea is good, there should be also user of this outside arm/arm64

Cool :-). Indeed one of the things I had in mind is that basically this
API based on a callback lets you put what you like in the EM. In the Arm
world, we will most likely register power values for all OPPs when we
know them. But if you want to use this on x86 on a platform where the OS
isn't aware of the OPPs for ex, you can still register something in there
if you really want to. It doesn't have to be "real" OPPs.

Thanks !
Quentin