Possible SNB throttling erratum in need of workaround?

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Wed Dec 18 2013 - 21:03:01 EST


I have a box running 3.9.4. For a few hundred ms, all packages and
cores* exceeded their power limits, and then they all came back to
normal.

Since then, turbo boost went away.

The first thing I tried was writing 0 to msr 0x19C to clear the
throttling "log" bit. The bit was clear, but still no turbo. (I only
did this on one package to avoid destroying information.)

I have the performance governor set, so there are never any
software-initiated performance transitions. As an experiment, I
switched core 0 to powersave (aka very low frequency) and then back to
performance. The entire package's turbo came back. I did the same
thing to the cores on package 1 (all of them, sorry), and that
package's turbo boost came back.

Does the kernel need to reprogram CPU frequencies after thermal/power
throttling conditions clear?

My CPUs are:

processor : 31
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 45
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 0 @ 2.90GHz
stepping : 7
microcode : 0x710


* Slight lie here. CPU18 exceeded core limit but not power limit.
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