[PATCH 00/16] big.LITTLE low-level CPU and cluster power management

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2013, Joseph Lo wrote:

> On Mon, 2013-01-14 at 22:05 +0800, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > On Mon, 14 Jan 2013, Joseph Lo wrote:
> > 
> > > Hi Nicolas,
> > > 
> > > On Thu, 2013-01-10 at 08:20 +0800, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > > > This is the initial public posting of the initial support for big.LITTLE.
> > > > Included here is the code required to safely power up and down CPUs in a
> > > > b.L system, whether this is via CPU hotplug, a cpuidle driver or the
> > > > Linaro b.L in-kernel switcher[*] on top of this.  Only  SMP secondary
> > > > boot and CPU hotplug support is included at this time.  Getting to this
> > > > point already represents a significcant chunk of code as illustrated by
> > > > the diffstat below.
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Thanks for introducing this series.
> > > I am taking a look at this series. It introduced an algorithm for
> > > syncing and avoid racing when syncing the power status of clusters and
> > > CPUs. Do you think these codes could have a chance to become a generic
> > > framework?
> > 
> > Yes.  As I mentioned before, the bL_ prefix is implied only by the fact 
> > that big.LITTLE was the motivation for creating this code.
> > 
> > > The Tegra chip series had a similar design for CPU clusters and it 
> > had
> > > limitation that the CPU0 always needs to be the last CPU to be shut down
> > > before cluster power down as well. I believe it can also get benefits of
> > > this works. We indeed need a similar algorithm to sync CPUs power status
> > > before cluster power down and switching.
> > > 
> > > The "bL_entry.c", "bL_entry.S", "bL_entry.h", "vlock.h" and "vlock.S"
> > > looks have a chance to be a common framework for ARM platform even if it
> > > just support one cluster. Because some systems had the limitations for
> > > cluster power down. That's why the coupled cpuidle been introduced. And
> > > this framework could be enabled automatically if platform dependent or
> > > by menuconfig.
> > 
> > Absolutely.
> > 
> So do you have a plan to make it become a generic framework in this
> series or later work?

It is already generic, except for the name.  In other words, you could 
start using this code already.

I'm still debating a good substitute for the bL_ prefix in this series 
to give it the appearance of generic code.


> (And I will add some common power sync wrapper functions that based on
> this framework for all Tegra series.)

Great!


Nicolas