Re: [PATCH 5/5] intel_idle: Add S0ix validation

[dbasehore .]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 12:53 PM, One Thousand Gnomes
<gnomes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> How would this spuriously trigger during boot? This code is only run
>> during freeze. If there's some issue with not entering S0ix before a
>> module or firmware is loaded, it's better to not use suspend to idle
>> until those are in place.
>
> Ok yes you are correct it's not likely to trigger during boot (although
> if you close the lid during boot...)
>
>> I'm not familiar with the ISH driver. How does it prevent entry into
>> S0ix? I would argue that you don't want to use suspend to idle on a
>> Skylake system that can't enter S0ix and instead use suspend to RAM.
>
> Several IP blocks on the systems do their own power management if present
> and enabled by the firmware. If they do not have drivers loaded then you
> will not be able to enter some power states. Thus you'll now get warnings
> if you try to freeze such a system and those warnings are not themselves
> terribly helpful to a user.

I would expect those IP blocks to do nothing and not block lower power
states if the firmware is not loaded. If that is not the case, I think
that should be fixed such that those lower power states are at least
available during suspend (if not during runtime). If your Skylake+
system is not entering S0ix during freeze, I consider that a bug that
needs to be addressed.

>
> It's a good debug feature, but it doesn't belong anywhere but debug menus
> and off by default. If you want to ship it enabled in ChromeOS for
> product fine, but I don't think it belongs on for everywhere and
> everything.

If other Linux distributions choose not to enable it in their kernel
configs, that's their decision. As I said, this does nothing in the
!CONFIG_INTEL_PMC_CORE case, but if a finer level config is warranted,
I can add that.

I would prefer if others used this more, since there would be better
debug coverage and I would have to fix fewer bugs.

>
> Alan