kernel-packages team mailing list archive

[Greg Mason <greg.mason@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Looking at the kernel CPUFreq Governors documentation[1], It looks like
powersave is actually a pretty poor default value for many applications,
but especially servers.

I'm not sure about low-power applications like laptops, and how power
usage is affected by frequency on other architectures.

Perhaps defaulting to the performance governor unless one of the more
intelligent governors is available?

[1]https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cpu-freq/governors.txt

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1579278

Title:
  Consider changing default CPU frequency scaling governor back to
  "performance"

Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete
Status in linux source package in Xenial:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Hi,

  With the new Ubuntu archive servers, we saw constantly high load and
  after some tinkering, we found that it was mostly CPUs being woken up
  to see if they should enter idle states. Changing the CPU frequency
  scaling governor to "performance" saw a considerable drop.

  Perf report using the following commands:

  | perf record -g -a sleep 10
  | perf report

  | Samples: 287K of event 'cycles:pp', Event count (approx.): 124776998906
  |   Children      Self  Command          Shared Object             Symbol
  | +   55.24%     0.20%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] cpu_startup_entry
  | +   53.51%     0.00%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] start_secondary
  | +   53.02%     0.08%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] call_cpuidle
  | +   52.94%     0.02%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] cpuidle_enter
  | +   31.81%     0.67%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] cpuidle_enter_state
  | +   29.59%     0.12%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] acpi_idle_enter
  | +   29.45%     0.05%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] acpi_idle_do_entry
  | +   29.43%    29.43%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] acpi_processor_ffh_cstate_enter
  | +   20.51%     0.04%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] ret_from_intr
  | +   20.47%     0.12%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] do_IRQ
  | +   19.30%     0.07%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] irq_exit
  | +   19.18%     0.07%  apache2          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] entry_SYSCALL_64_fastpath
  | +   18.80%     0.17%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] __do_softirq
  | +   16.45%     0.11%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] net_rx_action
  | +   16.25%     0.43%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] be_poll
  | +   14.74%     0.21%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] be_process_rx
  | +   13.61%     0.07%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] napi_gro_frags
  | +   12.58%     0.04%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] netif_receive_skb_internal
  | +   12.48%     0.03%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] __netif_receive_skb
  | +   12.42%     0.24%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] __netif_receive_skb_core
  | +   12.41%     0.00%  apache2          [unknown]                 [k] 0x00007f27983b5028
  | +   12.41%     0.00%  apache2          [unknown]                 [k] 0x00007f2798369028
  | +   11.49%     0.16%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] ip_rcv
  | +   11.29%     0.09%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] ip_rcv_finish
  | +   10.77%     0.05%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] ip_local_deliver
  | +   10.70%     0.06%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] ip_local_deliver_finish
  | +   10.55%     0.22%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] tcp_v4_rcv
  | +   10.10%     0.00%  apache2          [unknown]                 [k] 0000000000000000
  | +   10.01%     0.04%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] tcp_v4_do_rcv

  Expanding in a few of those, you'll see:

  | -   55.24%     0.20%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] cpu_startup_entry
  |    - 55.04% cpu_startup_entry
  |       - 52.98% call_cpuidle
  |          + 52.93% cpuidle_enter
  |          + 0.00% ret_from_intr
  |            0.00% cpuidle_enter_state
  |            0.00% irq_entries_start
  |       + 1.14% cpuidle_select
  |       + 0.47% schedule_preempt_disabled
  |         0.10% rcu_idle_enter
  |         0.09% rcu_idle_exit
  |       + 0.05% ret_from_intr
  |       + 0.05% tick_nohz_idle_enter
  |       + 0.04% arch_cpu_idle_enter
  |         0.02% cpuidle_enter
  |         0.02% tick_check_broadcast_expired
  |       + 0.01% cpuidle_reflect
  |         0.01% menu_reflect
  |         0.01% atomic_notifier_call_chain
  |         0.01% local_touch_nmi
  |         0.01% cpuidle_not_available
  |         0.01% menu_select
  |         0.01% cpuidle_get_cpu_driver
  |       + 0.01% tick_nohz_idle_exit
  |       + 0.01% sched_ttwu_pending
  |         0.00% set_cpu_sd_state_idle
  |         0.00% native_irq_return_iret
  |         0.00% schedule
  |       + 0.00% arch_cpu_idle_exit
  |         0.00% __tick_nohz_idle_enter
  |         0.00% irq_entries_start
  |         0.00% sched_clock_idle_wakeup_event
  |         0.00% reschedule_interrupt
  |       + 0.00% apic_timer_interrupt
  |    + 0.20% start_secondary
  |    + 0.00% x86_64_start_kernel
  | +   53.51%     0.00%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] start_secondary
  | +   53.02%     0.08%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] call_cpuidle
  | -   52.94%     0.02%  swapper          [kernel.kallsyms]         [k] cpuidle_enter
  |    - 52.92% cpuidle_enter
  |       + 31.81% cpuidle_enter_state
  |       + 20.01% ret_from_intr
  |       + 0.51% apic_timer_interrupt
  |         0.28% native_irq_return_iret
  |       + 0.09% reschedule_interrupt
  |         0.05% irq_entries_start
  |         0.05% do_IRQ
  |         0.05% common_interrupt
  |         0.02% sched_idle_set_state
  |         0.01% acpi_idle_enter
  |         0.01% ktime_get
  |         0.01% restore_regs_and_iret
  |         0.01% restore_c_regs_and_iret
  |       + 0.01% call_function_single_interrupt
  |         0.00% native_iret
  |       + 0.00% call_function_interrupt
  |         0.00% smp_apic_timer_interrupt
  |         0.00% smp_reschedule_interrupt
  |         0.00% smp_call_function_single_interrupt
  |    + 0.02% start_secondary

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