On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 7:36 PM, Laurence Tratt <[email protected]> wrote: > 18 months ago I posted a patch to make apmd's -C and -A modes work > half-sensibly on multi-processor machines: > > http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=123315164930014&w=2 > > The patch went into the tree but was backed out because on some very slow, > very old Sparc machines it apparently couldn't react quickly enough to > changes in processor utilisation. Since I had no access to such a machine, I > couldn't debug it, and the patch died. That means that apmd -C has been > close to useless on MP machines, since it needs all CPUs to be working hard > before it increases hw.setperf. > > One day hopefully this functionality will move into the kernel (I know Ted > and others are working towards that), but in the meantime someone asked me > if I could resurrect the backed-out patch which I attach to the end of this > e-mail. This patch cranks hw.setperf to 100 as soon as increased activity is > noticed and then gradually backs it off it can (in contrast to the old patch > which ramped up gradually; the new behaviour should increase battery life). > It also reflects recent changes to apmd.c. Apart from that it's largely the > same as before. It's been working for me over the last few days, but hasn't > been extensively tested so YMMV. However, if you work off battery on an MP > machine, you might find it helpful.
This has been working very well for me through the last two -current snapshots running cool mode GENERIC.MP amd64. Even though being a purely subjective observation my box seems more responsive especially when switching into and out of browser windows. And the battery consumption appears to be lowered a bit. Thanks, Rune
