That makes sense.  Adopting ACPI interfaces in the future 
would be the right way to go.  Thanks for the clarification.

-- jdh


Liu, Jiang wrote:
> Hi Julia,
>       Thanks for your reminder about rules to access throttling
> registers.
>       CPU idle notificatication should be a long lived component
> because it's a pure software interface and could also be used by 
> components other than FIPE.
>       For FIPE driver itself, it will only be used to support Intel
> 5000/7300 chipsets and won't be used on later Intel chipsets/CPUs.
> For future memory power management, I think it would be better to
> adopt ACPI interfaces other than directly talking to hardware.
> 
> Regards
> --Gerry
> 
> Julia.Harper at Sun.COM <mailto:Julia.Harper at Sun.COM> wrote:
>> Gerry --
>>
>> I see the FIPE driver directly modifies the throttling
>> registers in the memory controller.
>>
>> Although there is no issue in doing this in Intel systems
>> with a 7300 or 5000 series Memory Controller Hub, I want
>> bring up that OS configuring and enabling throttling
>> registers in later (Nehalem-based) Intel systems should be
>> avoided.  System designers assume that BIOS and/or the
>> service processor have ownership of throttling behavior.
>> Throttling may be used for managing system issues the OS is
>> not aware of.  If the OS and the layer beneath the OS both
>> attempt to use throttling for different purposes, this could
>> cause a problem.
>>
>> Do you see the cpu idle notification / FIPE driver solution
>> as a long lived approach to memory power management?
>>
>> -- jdh
>>
>>
>> Liu, Jiang wrote:
>>> Hi buddies,
>>>     I have developed a device driver for Intel 5000/7300 chipset
>>> which puts memory into power saving state when system is idle.
>>>     Could you please help to review it? Webrev is at
>>> http://cr.opensolaris.org/~gerry/fipe_20090408/.
>>>     There are two main parts in the webrev. The first one is
>>> enhancement to dcopy/ioat driver to support FIPE. The second one is
>>>     FIPE driver it self. Thanks!
>>> Liu Jiang (Gerry)
>>> Senior Software Engineer
>>> OpenSolaris, OTC, SSG, Intel
>>> Tel: (8610)82171643
>>> iNet: 8-758-1643
>>> Location: Raycom 9W013
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tesla-dev mailing list
>>> tesla-dev at opensolaris.org
>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/tesla-dev
> 
> Liu Jiang (Gerry)
> OpenSolaris, OTC, SSG, Intel

-- 

---------------------
     Julia Harper, julia.harper at sun.com


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