Comment 117 for bug 524281

Brian, I have tried the power3-generic patch and it improves some from the nopatch kernel. The wakeups are halved but the load average of the system is still running high. Output from powertop and top.

power3:

top - 10:22:59 up 14 min, 4 users, load average: 0.13, 0.28, 0.23
Tasks: 183 total, 1 running, 182 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 4.8%us, 1.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 92.5%id, 0.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.5%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 4008656k total, 1358760k used, 2649896k free, 80588k buffers
Swap: 3534264k total, 0k used, 3534264k free, 519024k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 1230 root 20 0 160m 28m 12m S 4 0.7 0:29.74 Xorg
 2663 lofas 20 0 928m 160m 14m S 3 4.1 0:34.86 chrome
 2563 lofas 20 0 599m 57m 26m S 2 1.5 0:11.25 chrome
 2683 lofas 20 0 59272 14m 9436 S 2 0.4 0:13.09 npviewer.bin

 PowerTOP version 1.12 (C) 2007 Intel Corporation

Cn Avg residency P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running) ( 7.7%) Turbo Mode 1.9%
polling 0.0ms ( 0.0%) 2.40 Ghz 0.2%
C1 mwait 0.2ms ( 0.0%) 1.60 Ghz 0.8%
C2 mwait 0.7ms ( 7.8%) 800 Mhz 97.1%
C6 mwait 2.0ms (84.5%)

Wakeups-from-idle per second : 539.4 interval: 10.0s
Power usage (5 minute ACPI estimate) : 0.3 W (244.4 hours left)

Top causes for wakeups:
  21.8% (140.4) npviewer.bin
  16.7% (107.6) [iwlagn] <interrupt>
  13.9% ( 89.5) [extra timer interrupt]
  11.9% ( 76.4) [kernel scheduler] Load balancing tick
  10.1% ( 65.2) [i915] <interrupt>
   5.1% ( 32.6) USB device 1-3.2 : USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse (Logitech)

NOPATCH:

top - 10:29:56 up 3 min, 3 users, load average: 0.17, 0.37, 0.17
Tasks: 210 total, 2 running, 208 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 6.2%us, 4.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 88.6%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.5%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 4008656k total, 1287232k used, 2721424k free, 75072k buffers
Swap: 3534264k total, 0k used, 3534264k free, 458580k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 1171 root 20 0 172m 30m 12m S 8 0.8 0:12.70 Xorg
 1994 lofas 20 0 210m 15m 11m S 4 0.4 0:00.78 gnome-terminal
 2417 lofas 20 0 59384 14m 9424 S 3 0.4 0:04.12 npviewer.bin
 1814 lofas 20 0 325m 35m 8696 S 2 0.9 0:01.84 compiz
 2038 root 20 0 12172 2540 1344 S 1 0.1 0:00.42 powertop

PowerTOP version 1.12 (C) 2007 Intel Corporation

Cn Avg residency P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running) (10.1%) Turbo Mode 1.0%
polling 0.0ms ( 0.0%) 2.40 Ghz 0.1%
C1 mwait 0.0ms ( 0.0%) 1.60 Ghz 0.3%
C2 mwait 0.5ms ( 5.5%) 800 Mhz 98.6%
C6 mwait 1.6ms (84.4%)

Wakeups-from-idle per second : 641.8 interval: 10.0s
Power usage (5 minute ACPI estimate) : 0.4 W (160.6 hours left)

Top causes for wakeups:
  22.2% (173.8) [kernel scheduler] Load balancing tick
  17.7% (139.2) npviewer.bin
  13.7% (107.6) [iwlagn] <interrupt>
  11.9% ( 93.0) [extra timer interrupt]

This can also be compared to the karmic-kernel 2.31 that I run instead now, where the load avg is lower and the wakeups are comparable with the power3 kernel.

top - 10:43:06 up 12 min, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.13, 0.16
Tasks: 183 total, 2 running, 181 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.2%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 95.9%id, 0.0%wa, 0.5%hi, 0.5%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 4009716k total, 1375892k used, 2633824k free, 89808k buffers
Swap: 3534260k total, 0k used, 3534260k free, 513776k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 5004 lofas 20 0 59232 14m 9436 S 3 0.4 0:12.05 npviewer.bin
 3701 root 20 0 155m 30m 13m S 2 0.8 0:40.72 Xorg
 4803 lofas 20 0 210m 15m 11m S 1 0.4 0:01.15 gnome-terminal
 4842 lofas 20 0 19220 1460 1060 R 0 0.0 0:03.08 top
    1 root 20 0 23692 1944 1268 S 0 0.0 0:00.93 init

PowerTOP version 1.12 (C) 2007 Intel Corporation

Cn Avg residency P-states (frequencies)
C0 (cpu running) ( 9.5%) Turbo Mode 0.8%
polling 0.0ms ( 0.0%) 2.40 Ghz 0.1%
C1 mwait 0.0ms ( 0.0%) 1.60 Ghz 0.0%
C2 mwait 0.1ms ( 0.2%) 800 Mhz 99.1%
C6 mwait 2.1ms (90.3%)

Wakeups-from-idle per second : 448.4 interval: 10.0s
Power usage (5 minute ACPI estimate) : 0.2 W (312.8 hours left)

Top causes for wakeups:
  19.8% (139.0) npviewer.bin
  17.3% (121.6) [iwlagn] <interrupt>
  10.9% ( 76.7) [extra timer interrupt]
  10.9% ( 76.4) [kernel scheduler] Load balancing tick
   9.1% ( 64.1) [i915] <interrupt>
   8.8% ( 61.6) USB device 1-3.2 : USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse (Logitech)