Len Brown d5532ee7b4 tools: create power/x86/x86_energy_perf_policy ... MSR_IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS first became available on Westmere Xeon. It is implemented in all Sandy Bridge processors -- mobile, desktop and server. It is expected to become increasingly important in subsequent generations. x86_energy_perf_policy is a user-space utility to set the hardware energy vs performance policy hint in the processor. Most systems would benefit from "x86_energy_perf_policy normal" at system startup, as the hardware default is maximum performance at the expense of energy efficiency. See x86_energy_perf_policy.8 man page for more information. Background: Linux-2.6.36 added "epb" to /proc/cpuinfo to indicate if an x86 processor supports MSR_IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS, without actually modifying the MSR. In March, 2010, Venkatesh Pallipadi proposed a small driver that programmed MSR_IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS, based on the cpufreq governor in use. It also offered a boot-time cmdline option to override. http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/3/4/457 But hiding the hardware policy behind the governor choice was deemed "kinda icky". In June, 2010, I proposed a generic user/kernel API to generalize the power/performance policy trade-off. "RFC: /sys/power/policy_preference" http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/6/16/399 That is my preference for implementing this capability, but I received no support on the list. So in September, 2010, I sent x86_energy_perf_policy.c to LKML, a user-space utility that scribbles directly to the MSR. http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/9/28/246 Here is that same utility, after responding to some review feedback, to live in tools/power/, where it is easily found. Signed-off-by: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>		2011-01-11 23:02:21 -05:00
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x86_energy_perf_policy	tools: create power/x86/x86_energy_perf_policy	2011-01-11 23:02:21 -05:00