Re: [PATCH v2 00/17] Introduce runtime modifiable Energy Model

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

Hi Lukasz,

On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 11:58 AM Lukasz Luba <lukasz.luba@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> This patch set adds a new feature which allows to modify Energy Model (EM)
> power values at runtime. It will allow to better reflect power model of
> a recent SoCs and silicon. Different characteristics of the power usage
> can be leveraged and thus better decisions made during task placement in EAS.
>
> It's part of feature set know as Dynamic Energy Model. It has been presented
> and discussed recently at OSPM2023 [3]. This patch set implements the 1st
> improvement for the EM.
>
> The concepts:
> 1. The CPU power usage can vary due to the workload that it's running or due
> to the temperature of the SoC. The same workload can use more power when the
> temperature of the silicon has increased (e.g. due to hot GPU or ISP).
> In such situation or EM can be adjusted and reflect the fact of increased
> power usage. That power increase is due to a factor called static power
> (sometimes called simply: leakage). The CPUs in recent SoCs are different.
> We have heterogeneous SoCs with 3 (or even 4) different microarchitectures.
> They are also built differently with High Performance (HP) cells or
> Low Power (LP) cells. They are affected by the temperature increase
> differently: HP cells have bigger leakage. The SW model can leverage that
> knowledge.
> 2. It is also possible to change the EM to better reflect the currently
> running workload. Usually the EM is derived from some average power values
> taken from experiments with benchmark (e.g. Dhrystone). The model derived
> from such scenario might not represent properly the workloads usually running
> on the device. Therefore, runtime modification of the EM allows to switch to
> a different model, when there is a need.
> 3. The EM can be adjusted after boot, when all the modules are loaded and
> more information about the SoC is available e.g. chip binning. This would help
> to better reflect the silicon characteristics. Thus, this EM modification
> API allows it now. It wasn't possible in the past and the EM had to be
> 'set in stone'.
>
> Some design details:
> The internal mechanisms for the memory allocation are handled internally in the
> EM. Kernel modules can just call the new API to update the EM data and the
> new memory would be provided and owned by the EM. The EM memory is used by
> EAS, which impacts those design decisions. The EM writers are protected by
> a mutex. This new runtime modified EM table is protected using RCU mechanism,
> which fits the current EAS hot path (which already uses RCU read lock).
> The unregister API handles only non-CPU (e.g. GPU, ISP) devices and uses the
> same mutex as EM modifiers to make sure the memory is safely freed.
>
> More detailed explanation and background can be found in presentations
> during LPC2022 [1][2] or in the documentation patches.
>
> Changelog:
> v2:
> - solved build warning of unused variable in patch 13/17 when EM is
>   not compiled in, e.g. on Intel platform for this cpufreq_cooling
> - re-based on top of v6.4-rc1
> v1:
> - implementation can be found here [4]
>
> [1] https://lpc.events/event/16/contributions/1341/attachments/955/1873/Dynamic_Energy_Model_to_handle_leakage_power.pdf
> [2] https://lpc.events/event/16/contributions/1194/attachments/1114/2139/LPC2022_Energy_model_accuracy.pdf
> [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C-5uikSbtM&list=PL0fKordpLTjKsBOUcZqnzlHShri4YBL1H
> [4] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20230314103357.26010-1-lukasz.luba@xxxxxxx/
>
> Lukasz Luba (17):
>   PM: EM: Refactor em_cpufreq_update_efficiencies() arguments
>   PM: EM: Find first CPU online while updating OPP efficiency
>   PM: EM: Refactor em_pd_get_efficient_state() to be more flexible
>   PM: EM: Create a new function em_compute_costs()
>   trace: energy_model: Add trace event for EM runtime modifications
>   PM: EM: Add update_power() callback for runtime modifications
>   PM: EM: Check if the get_cost() callback is present in
>     em_compute_costs()
>   PM: EM: Introduce runtime modifiable table
>   PM: EM: Add RCU mechanism which safely cleans the old data
>   PM: EM: Add runtime update interface to modify EM power
>   PM: EM: Use runtime modified EM for CPUs energy estimation in EAS
>   PM: EM: Add argument to get_cost() for runtime modification
>   PM: EM: Refactor struct em_perf_domain and add default_table
>   Documentation: EM: Add a new section about the design
>   Documentation: EM: Add a runtime modifiable EM design description
>   Documentation: EM: Add example with driver modifying the EM
>   Documentation: EM: Describe the API of runtime modifications

I haven't seen any responses from anyone having a vested interest in
the Energy Model code.

I'm not sure what this means, but I surely can't do much about it
myself without any input from the potentially interested parties.

Thanks!