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kitsunyan / intel-undervolt

Intel CPU undervolting and throttling configuration tool
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Hwphint stacking #39

Open thhart opened 4 years ago

thhart commented 4 years ago

First of all thanks for this great tool. I use this tool for a Thinkpad Extreme to tune it to be as quiet as possible but still be performant if needed in a more long term sense (several seconds)

I have something like this defined in the conf:

hwphint switch load:multi:4.00 balance_performance power

There is mentioned it might be possible to have multiple instructions like this. I would like to fine tune this a bit more, however I can not use this:

hwphint switch load:multi:1.00 balance_performance power hwphint switch load:multi:4.00 balance_power balance_performance

Also following things came in my mind:

  1. For testing it would be nice to see in a action log when a switching is performed.
  2. The documentation is very "dense", it is not easy to understand the power rules. What is a short_power_value and what is a long_power_value? Maybe some more examples would be helpful.
  3. How can I see the undervolt really taking place? Which monitoring tools are recommended?
  4. What exactly are the two different services good for? Might it be possible to combine them or is this a distro thing here in my Ubuntu?
kitsunyan commented 4 years ago
  1. Actually, I've used logging for testing, but I never commited them to the repo.
  2. Short term power limit and long term power limit. Tbh, I can't explain when exactly one is used over another, this configuration is used by CPU to switch between these power limits depending on some load conditions.
  3. You can use built-in intel-undervolt measure. Power consumption should be reduced with undervolting. There are also some other useful measurements.
  4. intel-undervolt.service applies configuration after wake up, you probably need it. intel-undervolt-loop.service applies configuration periodically. It's described in "Daemon Mode" section of readme. You can use both.
kitsunyan commented 4 years ago

hwphint switch load:multi:1.00 balance_performance power hwphint switch load:multi:4.00 balance_power balance_performance

This is how it's designed. The hints should not intersect, so you could use tools like tlp to configure HWP hint, and then intel-undervolt will switch between them. In your case, it's not clear where to switch from balance_performance state: either to balance_power or to power. I don't want to add additional checks like AC/battery since it will overcompicate things for nothing.