From owner-freebsd-acpi@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 15 17:56:25 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: acpi@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-acpi@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59DE216A400 for ; Tue, 15 May 2007 17:56:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from eric@anholt.net) Received: from vonnegut.anholt.net (69-30-77-85.dq1sn.easystreet.com [69.30.77.85]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 555FA13C469 for ; Tue, 15 May 2007 17:56:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from eric@anholt.net) Received: from vonnegut.anholt.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by vonnegut.anholt.net (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l4FHCNtM004970; Tue, 15 May 2007 10:12:24 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from eric@anholt.net) Received: (from anholt@localhost) by vonnegut.anholt.net (8.13.8/8.13.8/Submit) id l4FHCJfa004969; Tue, 15 May 2007 10:12:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from eric@anholt.net) X-Authentication-Warning: vonnegut.anholt.net: anholt set sender to eric@anholt.net using -f From: Eric Anholt To: "Wilkinson, Alex" In-Reply-To: <20070515050404.GK49628@obelix.dsto.defence.gov.au> References: <20070515050404.GK49628@obelix.dsto.defence.gov.au> Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="=-enY/pmXZ0tFQuffKfOtx" Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 10:12:14 -0700 Message-Id: <1179249135.1149.21.camel@vonnegut> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.10.0 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port Cc: acpi@freebsd.org Subject: Re: PowerTOP for FreeBSD ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-acpi@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: ACPI and power management development List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 17:56:25 -0000 --=-enY/pmXZ0tFQuffKfOtx Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, 2007-05-15 at 13:04 +0800, Wilkinson, Alex wrote: > Any chance this will get ported to FreeBSD ? >=20 > "Intel is proud to announce the PowerTOP tool, a program that collects= the > various pieces of information from your system and presents an overvi= ew of how > well your laptop is doing in terms of power savings. In addition, Pow= erTOP will > provide an indication of which tunables and software components are t= he biggest > offenders in slurping up your battery time. PowerTOP will update it's= display > frequently so that you can directly see the impact of any changes you= are > making." >=20 > [http://www.linuxpowertop.org/]. Until we get tickless scheduling, it's not of much use. Even then, the powertop tool as I've heard it described is just a little wrapper around several linux interfaces exposing information about interrupts and wakeup causes, so it wouldn't make much sense to port it because the only logic involved is just reading that information out. However, the power savings on desktop machines from going tickless and fixing stupid apps is pretty amazing -- the keithp quote about increasing battery life by over 50% was after only about two days of fixing stupid apps, and we're looking at trying to do even better for certain situations (let the cpu sleep for several frames at a time while playing movies, for example). Most of the app fixes that intel people playing with this tool have have developed (which has included at least ff, evolution, xchat, gaim, network mangler, xf86-video-intel, and gnome-terminal) have been pushed upstream already, so we should all be seeing the wins soon if we can go tickless. Until then, we'll just get the benefit of not blowing out caches and saving some context switches from apps waking up in order to do nothing. --=20 Eric Anholt anholt@FreeBSD.org eric@anholt.net eric.anholt@intel.com --=-enY/pmXZ0tFQuffKfOtx Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQBGSenuHUdvYGzw6vcRArVJAJ0cc8tE44mXGFlyL73L6+xzP0+yQQCeO/fp S6tSfVpvzjnggRHh4e52r+I= =cg3r -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-enY/pmXZ0tFQuffKfOtx--