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- .TH "CPUPOWER-IDLE-INFO" "1" "0.1" "" "cpupower Manual"
- .SH "NAME"
- .LP
- cpupower idle\-info \- Utility to retrieve cpu idle kernel information
- .SH "SYNTAX"
- .LP
- cpupower [ \-c cpulist ] idle\-info [\fIoptions\fP]
- .SH "DESCRIPTION"
- .LP
- A tool which prints out per cpu idle information helpful to developers and interested users.
- .SH "OPTIONS"
- .LP
- .TP
- \fB\-f\fR \fB\-\-silent\fR
- Only print a summary of all available C-states in the system.
- .TP
- \fB\-e\fR \fB\-\-proc\fR
- deprecated.
- Prints out idle information in old /proc/acpi/processor/*/power format. This
- interface has been removed from the kernel for quite some time, do not let
- further code depend on this option, best do not use it.
- .SH IDLE\-INFO DESCRIPTIONS
- CPU sleep state statistics and descriptions are retrieved from sysfs files,
- exported by the cpuidle kernel subsystem. The kernel only updates these
- statistics when it enters or leaves an idle state, therefore on a very idle or
- a very busy system, these statistics may not be accurate. They still provide a
- good overview about the usage and availability of processor sleep states on
- the platform.
- Be aware that the sleep states as exported by the hardware or BIOS and used by
- the Linux kernel may not exactly reflect the capabilities of the
- processor. This often is the case on the X86 architecture when the acpi_idle
- driver is used. It is also possible that the hardware overrules the kernel
- requests, due to internal activity monitors or other reasons.
- On recent X86 platforms it is often possible to read out hardware registers
- which monitor the duration of sleep states the processor resided in. The
- cpupower monitor tool (cpupower\-monitor(1)) can be used to show real sleep
- state residencies. Please refer to the architecture specific description
- section below.
- .SH IDLE\-INFO ARCHITECTURE SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS
- .SS "X86"
- POLL idle state
- If cpuidle is active, X86 platforms have one special idle state.
- The POLL idle state is not a real idle state, it does not save any
- power. Instead, a busy\-loop is executed doing nothing for a short period of
- time. This state is used if the kernel knows that work has to be processed
- very soon and entering any real hardware idle state may result in a slight
- performance penalty.
- There exist two different cpuidle drivers on the X86 architecture platform:
- "acpi_idle" cpuidle driver
- The acpi_idle cpuidle driver retrieves available sleep states (C\-states) from
- the ACPI BIOS tables (from the _CST ACPI function on recent platforms or from
- the FADT BIOS table on older ones).
- The C1 state is not retrieved from ACPI tables. If the C1 state is entered,
- the kernel will call the hlt instruction (or mwait on Intel).
- "intel_idle" cpuidle driver
- In kernel 2.6.36 the intel_idle driver was introduced.
- It only serves recent Intel CPUs (Nehalem, Westmere, Sandybridge, Atoms or
- newer). On older Intel CPUs the acpi_idle driver is still used (if the BIOS
- provides C\-state ACPI tables).
- The intel_idle driver knows the sleep state capabilities of the processor and
- ignores ACPI BIOS exported processor sleep states tables.
- .SH "REMARKS"
- .LP
- By default only values of core zero are displayed. How to display settings of
- other cores is described in the cpupower(1) manpage in the \-\-cpu option
- section.
- .SH REFERENCES
- http://www.acpi.info/spec.htm
- .SH "FILES"
- .nf
- \fI/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpuidle/state*\fP
- \fI/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuidle/*\fP
- .fi
- .SH "AUTHORS"
- .nf
- Thomas Renninger <trenn@suse.de>
- .fi
- .SH "SEE ALSO"
- .LP
- cpupower(1), cpupower\-monitor(1), cpupower\-info(1), cpupower\-set(1)
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