Re: kernel 3.7+ cpufreq regression on AMD system running as dom0

["Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>]

On Monday, January 21, 2013 01:42:55 PM Borislav Petkov wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 12:22:18PM +0000, Stefan Bader wrote:
> > So for having the "check for sensible BIOS" in mainline I refreshed
> > the patch (fixed the bit test, and actually tested it this time) and
> > also added some hopefully sensible explanation to it (attached
> > below).
> > 
> > Should I send it to acpi lists or would that have to go via an Andre?
> 
> Maybe Rafael could pick it up?

I can, if you ACK it for me. :-)

Thanks,
Rafael

 
> > From 6e2fc8291c91339123a37162382d8b08b50867ba Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > From: Stefan Bader <stefan.bader@canonical.com>
> > Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:17:00 +0100
> > Subject: [PATCH] ACPI: Check MSR valid bit before using P-state frequencies
> > 
> > To fix incorrect P-state frequencies which can happen on
> > some AMD systems f594065faf4f9067c2283a34619fc0714e79a98d
> >   "ACPI: Add fixups for AMD P-state figures"
> > introduced a quirk to obtain the correct values by reading
> > from AMD specific MSRs.
> > 
> > This did cause a regression when running a kernel using that
> > quirk under Xen which does (currently) not pass on the contents
> > of the HW but 0.
> 
> Actually this should say "does not currently pass through MSR accesses
> to baremetal" or similar.
> 
> And this bit you mean is actually bit 63:
> 
> "63: PstateEn. Read-write. 1=The P-state specified by this MSR is valid.
> 0=The P-state specified by this MSR is not valid. The purpose of this
> register is to indicate if the rest of the P-state information in the
> register is valid after a reset; it controls no hardware."
> 
> in the MSRC001_00[68:64] P-State [4:0] Registers.
> 
> > And this seems to cause a failure to initialize
> > the ondemand governour (hard to say for sure as all P-states
> > appear to run at the same frequency).
> > 
> > While this should also be fixed in the hypervisor (to allow
> > a guest to read that MSR), this patch is intended to work
> > around the issue in the meantime. In discussion it turned out
> > that indeed real HW/BIOSes may choose to not set the valid bit
> > and thus mark the P-state as invalid. So this could be considered
> > a fix for broken BIOSes that also works around the issue on Xen.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Stefan Bader <stefan.bader@canonical.com>
> > Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # v3.7..
> > ---
> >  drivers/acpi/processor_perflib.c | 3 +++
> >  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
> > 
> > diff --git a/drivers/acpi/processor_perflib.c b/drivers/acpi/processor_perflib.c
> > index 836bfe0..41f4bdac 100644
> > --- a/drivers/acpi/processor_perflib.c
> > +++ b/drivers/acpi/processor_perflib.c
> > @@ -340,6 +340,9 @@ static void amd_fixup_frequency(struct
> > acpi_processor_px *px, int i)
> >  	if ((boot_cpu_data.x86 == 0x10 && boot_cpu_data.x86_model < 10)
> >  	    || boot_cpu_data.x86 == 0x11) {
> >  		rdmsr(MSR_AMD_PSTATE_DEF_BASE + index, lo, hi);
> > +		/* Bit 63 indicates whether contents are valid */
> > +		if (!(hi & 0x80000000))
> 
> You can make this a lot more explicit:
> 
> 		if (!(hi & BIT(31)))
> 			return;
> 
> This way
> 
> 1) you're sure you're testing the correct bit and
> 2) any reviewer can know on the spot which bit it is about.
> 
> > +			return;
> >  		fid = lo & 0x3f;
> >  		did = (lo >> 6) & 7;
> >  		if (boot_cpu_data.x86 == 0x10)
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
-- 
I speak only for myself.
Rafael J. Wysocki, Intel Open Source Technology Center.