Re: [PATCH] cpufreq: intel_pstate: Implement passive mode with HWP enabled

["Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>]

Hi Doug,

On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 3:37 PM Doug Smythies <dsmythies@telus.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Rafael,
>
> Thank you for your reply.
>
> On 2020.07.16 05:08 Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 10:39 PM Doug Smythies <dsmythies@telus.net> wrote:
> >> On 2020.07.14 11:16 Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> >> >
> >> > From: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
> >> ...
> >> > Since the passive mode hasn't worked with HWP at all, and it is not going to
> >> > the default for HWP systems anyway, I don't see any drawbacks related to making
> >> > this change, so I would consider this as 5.9 material unless there are any
> >> > serious objections.
> >>
> >> Good point.
>
> Actually, for those users that default to passive mode upon boot,
> this would mean they would find themselves using this.
> Also, it isn't obvious, from the typical "what driver and what governor"
> inquiry.

So the change in behavior is that after this patch
intel_pstate=passive doesn't imply no_hwp any more.

That's a very minor difference though and I'm not aware of any adverse
effects it can cause on HWP systems anyway.

The "what governor" is straightforward in the passive mode: that's
whatever cpufreq governor has been selected.

The driver is "intel_cpufreq" which means that the processor is
requested to run at a frequency selected by the governor or higher,
unless in the turbo range.  This works similarly in both the HWP and
non-HWP cases, except that in the HWP case it is possible to adjust
the EPP (through the additional sysfs knob) and the base frequency is
exported (the latter two things can be used to distinguish between the
two cases just fine IMO).

> >> Some of the tests I do involve labour intensive post processing of data.
> >> I want to automate some of that work, and it will take time.
> >> We might be into the 5.9-rc series before I have detailed feedback.
> >>
> >> However, so far:
> >>
> >> Inverse impulse response test [1]:
> >>
> >> High level test, i5-9600K, HWP-passive (this patch), ondemand:
> >> 3101 tests. 0 failures. (GOOD)
> >>
> >> From [1], re-stated:
> >> > . High level: i5-9600K: 2453 tests, 60 failures, 2.45% fail rate. (HWP-active - powersave)
> >> > . Verify acpi-cpufreq/ondemand works fine: i5-9600K: 8975 tests. 0 failures.
> >>
> >> My version of that cool Alexander named pipe test [2] serialized workflow:
> >>
> >> HWP-passive (this patch), performance: PASS.
> >>
> >> From [2], re-stated, and also re-tested.
> >> HWP-disabled passive - performance: FAIL.
> >
> > But I'm not quite sure how this is related to this patch?
>
> It isn't. The point being that it is different.

It is different, but kind of in a positive way IMO.

> But yes, that failure is because of our other discussion [3].

OK

> >
> > This test would still fail without the patch if the kernel was started
> > with intel_pstate=passive in the kernel command line, wouldn't it.
>
> Yes.

OK

Thanks!