the last quarter term is mostly spent on acpi cpuidle driver implementation. I also spent about 2 days to adjust the cpuidle framework so that the cpuidle generic module is loaded by lowlevel cpuidle driver, while the later will be loaded during boot up either by bus enumeration or calling get_module() manually. I also tested the power after acpi cpuidle driver is finished. The result is as good as intel native one.
I began to implement the acpi cpuidle driver so that the power saving feature can benefit all x86 platforms(In theory although). The acpi is more complicated than I thought. The main time is spent on implementing “_CST” evaluation and decoding.
First of all, to evaluate any acpi object/method needs acpi handle. Since haiku doesn’t export AcpiWalkSpace method of acpica, so after system booting, I can get the acpi processor handle. the only solution is using the device manager so that the acpi cpuidle driver can be loaded during boot.
With the good preparation in quarter term/bonding period, I have completed the generic cpuidle kernel module, native intel cpuidle module and cpuidle driver(for states/info reporting). By original plan, these tasks will be all completed by the end of 3/4 term…
I completed my 1/4 goal ahead of proposal schedule. By the original plan, I should investigate whether we need necessary changes to x86 idle routine and x86 architecture specific instruction usage. The results were reported to gsoc maillist on 3rd Jun. Here are the copied results:
no need to change x86 idle routine
monitor/mwait works perfectly. I have measured the power consumption when using idle implemented with “monitor/mwait”, it’s the same as the version implemented with “hlt”.
As we all know, cpuidle can’t save any power if cpu is wakeup frequently during idle– cpu doesn’t have chance to go to deep sleep. So to get power savings, besides cpuidle support, we must remove those unnecessary wakeups.
During the bonding period, I added some code to dump system timer wakeup events and found the cpu wakeup during idle is too high, ~550 wakeup/s. Then with the help of KDL, I found one obvious wakeup source – the scheduler’s quantumTimer.
My gsoc2012 project is adding cpuidle support to haiku. As we all know, transistor power consumption is composed of dynamic and static ones. The former is due to charge/discharge of capacitance and other switching activity; the later is due to leakage and bias current. In the following section, I’d like to simply abstract power saving technology in nowadays cpu; powering saving technology in nowadays OS; what’s missing in haiku, IOW the reason why I want to work on it.
