Re: [RESEND][PATCH 0/3] ACPI: CPPC: Reduce .target() callback overhead

Christian Loehle <[email protected]> Thu, 6 Aug 2026 11:05:21 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.linux.kernel,gmane.linux.power-management.general,gmane.linux.acpi.devel
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 8/3/26 23:28, Christian Loehle wrote:
> On 8/3/26 22:05, Christian Loehle wrote:
>> cppc-cpufreq reaches cppc_set_perf() from every target callback.  For
>> direct SystemMemory controls, that path currently does several steps
>> which are unnecessary once the immutable _CPC layout is known:
>>
>>   - a full-width write first reads the access unit and merges the value.
>>   - every write takes the descriptor's RMW lock, even when its access unit
>>     is not shared with another _CPC entry.
>>   - cppc_set_perf() evaluates the same three PCC predicates at each phase
>>     of the transaction.
>>
>> Remove those costs while retaining the existing conservative paths for
>> partial fields, overlapping or malformed access units, and PCC controls.
>>
>> The series was tested on Arm Power-Orion O6 and AmpereOne systems using
>> cppc-cpufreq and schedutil.  An rt-app task pinned to one CPU ran for
>> 500 us every 2 ms with uclamp.min=512, for 5000 periods per run.  schedutil
>> rate_limit_us was 1000.  cppc_cpufreq_fast_switch() latency was measured
>> for 100 ten-second runs.  Each sample is the mean callback latency within
>> one run, and the table reports the median and sample standard deviation
>> of those samples.
>>
>> Orion O6               median       stdev       callbacks
>> baseline               5703 ns      307 ns       188017
>> complete series        5023 ns      240 ns       188209
>> ==> 680 ns (11.9%) reduction
>>
>> AmpereOne              median       stdev
>> baseline               2090 ns      157 ns
>> complete series      1907.5 ns      140 ns
>> ==> 182.5 ns (8.7%) reduction
>>
>> The cumulative intermediate results on the Orion O6 attribute roughly half
>> of the gain to each of the first two patches: avoiding the read reduced
>> the median by 284 ns (5.0%), and avoiding the lock reduced it by another
>> 336 ns (6.2%).
>> Together they account for 620 ns of the 680 ns total reduction.
>>
>> With the same arm64 configuration and GCC 11.4, caching the PCC predicate
>> also reduces cppc_set_perf() from 1124 to 884 bytes.  The generated
>> function has 60 fewer instructions, 17 fewer loads and 20 fewer branches.
>>
>> This series is based on the CPPC fixes posted at (already queued):
>> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/
>>
>> and the separately posted fix still under review:
>> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/
>>
>> PS:
>> There's a final optimization that I actually wanted to make but decided to
>> split it out for now as it somewhat replicated Sumit's series:
>> Skipping redundant perf ctrl writes in cpufreq-cppc if registers are non-PCC
>> and !shared (because the values are unchanged, the
>> !autonomous-common-case), but that requires the driver to have a more
>> complex caching- and atomic-updating machinery in place, similar to
>> hotplug. As opposed to this series the optimization would be for the
>> microcontroller handling the CPPC requests, which may be shared across
>> many CPUs and therefore redundant requests can increase the dvfs
>> transition latency.
>> That patch will follow once Sumit's is queued:
>> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/
>>
>> [RESEND] for the new base-commit specifier below
>>
>> Christian Loehle (3):
>>   ACPI: CPPC: Avoid unnecessary reads for full-width writes
>>   ACPI: CPPC: Avoid locking standalone full-width registers
>>   ACPI: CPPC: Evaluate performance-control PCC use once
>>
>>  drivers/acpi/cppc_acpi.c | 135 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
>>  include/acpi/cppc_acpi.h |   5 +-
>>  2 files changed, 113 insertions(+), 27 deletions(-)
>>
>>
>> base-commit: 075b74841bd0065a3bda3440873c747938e69b68
> 
> Nice, so that worked:
> https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/[email protected]
> Seems no findings on $SUBJECT but the rest of the comments it has
> look legit to me? I'll go take another look tomorrow:

So I have patches for these all and will post them in a minute.

> 
> 1. Using per-CPU cpc_desc->rmw_lock for SYSTEM_MEMORY CPPC control register that
> may be shared.

The solution here sucks unfortunately.
Obviously expanding the per-CPU rmw_lock to per-policy is reasonable, but unfortunately
that doesn't prevent something like:
Policy 0 Desired: address X, bits 7:0,  access size 32
Policy 1 Desired: address X, bits 15:8, access size 32
which would be a compliant GAS description and would require a global lock for rmw.

And of course even worse, now that Desired is write-only rmw isn't possible at all
anymore.
I'm leaning to just reject these edge-cases that hopefully don't actually exist
(and require _CPC rev4 to be full access-unit width)
Opinions?

> 2. MASK_VAL_WRITE() truncation on 32bit architectures.
> 3. acpi_cppc_processor_exit() calls kfree(cpc_ptr) unconditionally (UAF with sysfs?)
> 4. cppc_set_reg_val_in_pcc() calls cpc_write() before down_write(&pcc_ss_data->pcc_lock)
> 5 & 6 are sanitization of values from FW. 
>