diff mbox series

thermal: of: Allow selection of thermal governor in DT

Message ID 3b80853abb45a9e067cf7a16754b07bb67712457.1520274879.git.amit.kucheria@linaro.org
State New
Headers show
Series thermal: of: Allow selection of thermal governor in DT | expand

Commit Message

Amit Kucheria March 5, 2018, 6:36 p.m. UTC
From: Ram Chandrasekar <rkumbako@codeaurora.org>


There is currently no way for the governor to be selected for each thermal
zone in devicetree. This results in the default governor being used for all
thermal zones even though no such restriction exists in the core code.

Add support for specifying the thermal governor to be used for a thermal
zone in the devicetree. The devicetree config should specify the governor
name as a string that matches any available governors. If not specified, we
maintain the current behaviour of using the default governor.

Signed-off-by: Ram Chandrasekar <rkumbako@codeaurora.org>

Signed-off-by: Amit Kucheria <amit.kucheria@linaro.org>

---
 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt | 8 ++++++++
 drivers/thermal/of-thermal.c                          | 6 ++++++
 2 files changed, 14 insertions(+)

-- 
2.7.4

Comments

Amit Kucheria March 6, 2018, 5:38 a.m. UTC | #1
On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 1:38 AM, Rob Herring <robh+dt@kernel.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 12:36 PM, Amit Kucheria <amit.kucheria@linaro.org> wrote:

>> From: Ram Chandrasekar <rkumbako@codeaurora.org>

>>

>> There is currently no way for the governor to be selected for each thermal

>> zone in devicetree. This results in the default governor being used for all

>> thermal zones even though no such restriction exists in the core code.

>>

>> Add support for specifying the thermal governor to be used for a thermal

>> zone in the devicetree. The devicetree config should specify the governor

>> name as a string that matches any available governors. If not specified, we

>> maintain the current behaviour of using the default governor.

>>

>> Signed-off-by: Ram Chandrasekar <rkumbako@codeaurora.org>

>> Signed-off-by: Amit Kucheria <amit.kucheria@linaro.org>

>> ---

>>  Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt | 8 ++++++++

>>  drivers/thermal/of-thermal.c                          | 6 ++++++

>>  2 files changed, 14 insertions(+)

>>

>> diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt

>> index 1719d47..fced9d3 100644

>> --- a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt

>> +++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt

>> @@ -168,6 +168,14 @@ Optional property:

>>                         by means of sensor ID. Additional coefficients are

>>                         interpreted as constant offset.

>>

>> +- thermal-governor:     Thermal governor to be used for this thermal zone.

>> +                       Expected values are:

>> +                       "step_wise": Use step wise governor.

>> +                       "fair_share": Use fair share governor.

>> +                       "user_space": Use user space governor.

>> +                       "power_allocator": Use power allocator governor.

>

> This looks pretty Linux specific. Not that we can't have Linux

> specific properties, but we try to avoid them.

>

> What determines the selection? I'd imagine only certain governors make

> sense for certain devices. We should perhaps describe those

> characteristics which can then infer the best governor. Not really

> sure though...


I'm not sure if it would be easy to assign preferred governors to
device classes. It is dependent on what devices are present on the
system, what throttling knobs they expose and how the system designer
decided to integrate it all. e.g. A GPU driver might be controlled in
kernel or userspace depending on whether it exposes a devfreq knob or
some more esoteric statistics to userspace.

Bang Bang governor seems to be designed for Fans with a simple ON/OFF iterface.
Userspace governor is designed to move thermal policy to userspace
(e.g. through thermald). So backlight brightness, battery charging,
GPU scaling, even cpu frequency scaling can be offloaded to userspace.
On embedded platforms, modem control typically happens in userspace
Power allocator governor is designed for a closed-loop system to keep
the total TDP of the platform under control while allowing various
devices (cpu, gpu, modem, etc.) to dynamically increase or decrease
their individual budget depending on the usecase.

Regards,
Amit
Amit Kucheria March 6, 2018, 5:48 a.m. UTC | #2
On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 2:41 AM, Daniel Lezcano
<daniel.lezcano@linaro.org> wrote:
> On 05/03/2018 19:36, Amit Kucheria wrote:

>> From: Ram Chandrasekar <rkumbako@codeaurora.org>

>>

>> There is currently no way for the governor to be selected for each thermal

>> zone in devicetree. This results in the default governor being used for all

>> thermal zones even though no such restriction exists in the core code.

>>

>> Add support for specifying the thermal governor to be used for a thermal

>> zone in the devicetree. The devicetree config should specify the governor

>> name as a string that matches any available governors. If not specified, we

>> maintain the current behaviour of using the default governor.

>>

>> Signed-off-by: Ram Chandrasekar <rkumbako@codeaurora.org>

>> Signed-off-by: Amit Kucheria <amit.kucheria@linaro.org>

>

> Why not create a kernel parameter (eg. thermal.governor=) ? So everyone

> can gain benefit of this feature. And in order to specify that from the

> DT, add the 'chosen' node and bootargs with the desired kernel parameter?

>


This is supposed to be a per-thermal zone property. So specifying it
on the command-line, while possible, might be a little cumbersome. I'm
not even sure if kernel parameters can have a variable number of
arguments. IOW, thermal.tz0.governor=userspace,
thermal.tz1.governor=step_wise, thermal.tz2.governor=userspace, .....

I'm already seeing SoCs defining 8 or more thermal zones.
Amit Kucheria March 7, 2018, 10:59 a.m. UTC | #3
On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 6:02 PM, Sudeep Holla <sudeep.holla@arm.com> wrote:
>

>

> On 05/03/18 18:36, Amit Kucheria wrote:

>> From: Ram Chandrasekar <rkumbako@codeaurora.org>

>>

>> There is currently no way for the governor to be selected for each thermal

>> zone in devicetree.

>

> How is that any different from cpufreq, cpuidle or devfreq subsystems ?


Cpufreq/cpuidle are designed to control a single parameter while
thermal framework is trying to mitigate heat from several disparate
sources that are throttled in different ways. Besides, cpufreq/cpuidle
have somewhat mature governors. Cpuidle has only one governor (for
tickless) - menu governor, cpufreq has ondemand in mainline, replaced
by interactive in android and hopefully soon both will be replaced by
schedutil.

Badly configured cpufreq/cpuidle/devfreq only leads to wasted power,
while badly configured thermal zone leads to the loss of operation
e.g. reboots, too hot to touch, etc.

>> This results in the default governor being used for all

>> thermal zones even though no such restriction exists in the core code.

>>

>

> What restrictions ?


I said "no such restriction exists". IOW, the core code does allow the
governor to be changed.

>> Add support for specifying the thermal governor to be used for a thermal

>> zone in the devicetree.

>

> Then what prevents us from doing the same for other subsystems with so

> called /inefficient default/ governors ?


Nothing? :-)

It depends on how closely we want the board DT to represent a
production-ready setup. If a platform maintainer wants to ship a
well-tested configuration in DT, is that really a problem?

If however, you are requiring them to ship magic runes for userspace
daemons (e.g. per-board thermald config) to tweak the various
governors in sysfs, it takes a bit more work to get to a
production-ready setup.

We should of course continue to improve our govenors to arrive at the
one true governor, but that'll take some time and might never even
happen in the case of thermal IMHO.

>> The devicetree config should specify the governor

>> name as a string that matches any available governors. If not specified, we

>> maintain the current behaviour of using the default governor.

>

> If one is specified, can the user change it from sysfs ? If

> yes, then why do we need this binding at all ? If no, we are basically

> restricting, then what would happen if the DT was shipped with wrong

> governor specified because the firmware author didn't know about any

> other governor ?


The governor can be changed from sysfs today. So it is all override-able.

I guess your main worry is an unmodifiable DT with this option being
shipped in firmware, right? That is a fair point, though that could be
worked around from sysfs.

> IMO, having this in DT is bad idea as it may cause more issues than

> gain. We already have sysfs support like other PM subsystems and

> userspace can deal with it.


As mentioned above, I think thermal is a bit special because bad
configuration may lead to loss of operation. But iff we're strictly
enforcing the rule about no policy in board DTs, then I concede.

Personally, I'd like mainline board DTs to have enough policy to
provide a stable system so I don't have to futz around with userspace
to set it all up correctly (in 3 different distros).

Regards,
Amit
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt
index 1719d47..fced9d3 100644
--- a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt
+++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/thermal/thermal.txt
@@ -168,6 +168,14 @@  Optional property:
 			by means of sensor ID. Additional coefficients are
 			interpreted as constant offset.
 
+- thermal-governor:     Thermal governor to be used for this thermal zone.
+			Expected values are:
+			"step_wise": Use step wise governor.
+			"fair_share": Use fair share governor.
+			"user_space": Use user space governor.
+			"power_allocator": Use power allocator governor.
+  Type: string
+
 - sustainable-power:	An estimate of the sustainable power (in mW) that the
   Type: unsigned	thermal zone can dissipate at the desired
   Size: one cell	control temperature.  For reference, the
diff --git a/drivers/thermal/of-thermal.c b/drivers/thermal/of-thermal.c
index e09f035..a884b01 100644
--- a/drivers/thermal/of-thermal.c
+++ b/drivers/thermal/of-thermal.c
@@ -974,6 +974,7 @@  int __init of_parse_thermal_zones(void)
 		struct thermal_zone_params *tzp;
 		int i, mask = 0;
 		u32 prop;
+		const char *governor_name;
 
 		tz = thermal_of_build_thermal_zone(child);
 		if (IS_ERR(tz)) {
@@ -996,6 +997,11 @@  int __init of_parse_thermal_zones(void)
 		/* No hwmon because there might be hwmon drivers registering */
 		tzp->no_hwmon = true;
 
+		if (!of_property_read_string(child, "thermal-governor",
+						&governor_name))
+			strlcpy(tzp->governor_name, governor_name,
+					THERMAL_NAME_LENGTH);
+
 		if (!of_property_read_u32(child, "sustainable-power", &prop))
 			tzp->sustainable_power = prop;