freebsd-dev/usr.sbin/powerd/powerd.8

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.\" Copyright (c) 2005 Nate Lawson
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
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.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
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.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
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.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd December 24, 2008
.Dt POWERD 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm powerd
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.Nd "system power control utility"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
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.Op Fl a Ar mode
.Op Fl b Ar mode
.Op Fl i Ar percent
.Op Fl n Ar mode
.Op Fl p Ar ival
.Op Fl P Ar pidfile
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.Op Fl r Ar percent
.Op Fl v
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility monitors the system state and sets various power control options
accordingly.
It offers three modes (maximum, minimum, and adaptive) that can be
individually selected while on AC power or batteries.
Set of powerd enchancements: 1. Make it more SMP polite. Previous version uses average CPU load that often leads to load underestimation. It make powerd with default configuration unusable on systems with more then 2 CPUs. I propose to use summary load instead of average one. IMO this is the best we can do without specially tuned scheduler. Also as soon as measuring total load on SMP systems is more useful then total idle, I have switched to it. 2. Make powerd's operation independent from number and size of frequency levels. I have added internal frequency counter which translated into real frequencies only on a last stage and only as good as gone. Some systems may have only several power levels, while others - many of them, so adaptation time with previous approach was completely different. 3. As part of previous I have changed adaptive mode to rise frequency on demand up to 2 times and fall on 1/8 per time internal. 4. For desktop (AC-powered) systems I have added one more mode - "hiadaptive". It rises frequency twice faster, drops it 4 times slower, prefers twice lower CPU load and has additional delay before leaving the highest frequency after the period of maximum load. This mode was specially made to improve interactivity of the systems where operation capabilities are more significant then power consumption, but keeping maximum frequency all the time is not needed. 5. I have reduced default polling interval from 1/2 to 1/4 of second. It is not so important for algorithm math now, but gives better system interactivity. Discussed on: mobile@
2008-11-18 13:24:38 +00:00
The modes maximum, minimum, adaptive and hiadaptive may be abbreviated
max, min, adp, hadp.
.Pp
Maximum mode chooses the highest performance values.
Minimum mode selects the lowest performance values to get the most power
savings.
Adaptive mode attempts to strike a balance by degrading performance when
the system appears idle and increasing it when the system is busy.
It offers a good balance between a small performance loss for greatly
increased power savings.
Set of powerd enchancements: 1. Make it more SMP polite. Previous version uses average CPU load that often leads to load underestimation. It make powerd with default configuration unusable on systems with more then 2 CPUs. I propose to use summary load instead of average one. IMO this is the best we can do without specially tuned scheduler. Also as soon as measuring total load on SMP systems is more useful then total idle, I have switched to it. 2. Make powerd's operation independent from number and size of frequency levels. I have added internal frequency counter which translated into real frequencies only on a last stage and only as good as gone. Some systems may have only several power levels, while others - many of them, so adaptation time with previous approach was completely different. 3. As part of previous I have changed adaptive mode to rise frequency on demand up to 2 times and fall on 1/8 per time internal. 4. For desktop (AC-powered) systems I have added one more mode - "hiadaptive". It rises frequency twice faster, drops it 4 times slower, prefers twice lower CPU load and has additional delay before leaving the highest frequency after the period of maximum load. This mode was specially made to improve interactivity of the systems where operation capabilities are more significant then power consumption, but keeping maximum frequency all the time is not needed. 5. I have reduced default polling interval from 1/2 to 1/4 of second. It is not so important for algorithm math now, but gives better system interactivity. Discussed on: mobile@
2008-11-18 13:24:38 +00:00
Hiadaptive mode is alike adaptive mode, but tuned for systems where
performance and interactivity are more important then power consumption.
It rises frequency faster, drops slower and keeps twice lower CPU load.
The default mode is adaptive for battery power and hiadaptive for the rest.
.Pp
The
.Nm
utility recognizes the following runtime options:
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.Bl -tag -width ".Fl r Ar percent"
.It Fl a Ar mode
Selects the
.Ar mode
to use while on AC power.
.It Fl b Ar mode
Selects the
.Ar mode
to use while on battery power.
.It Fl i Ar percent
Set of powerd enchancements: 1. Make it more SMP polite. Previous version uses average CPU load that often leads to load underestimation. It make powerd with default configuration unusable on systems with more then 2 CPUs. I propose to use summary load instead of average one. IMO this is the best we can do without specially tuned scheduler. Also as soon as measuring total load on SMP systems is more useful then total idle, I have switched to it. 2. Make powerd's operation independent from number and size of frequency levels. I have added internal frequency counter which translated into real frequencies only on a last stage and only as good as gone. Some systems may have only several power levels, while others - many of them, so adaptation time with previous approach was completely different. 3. As part of previous I have changed adaptive mode to rise frequency on demand up to 2 times and fall on 1/8 per time internal. 4. For desktop (AC-powered) systems I have added one more mode - "hiadaptive". It rises frequency twice faster, drops it 4 times slower, prefers twice lower CPU load and has additional delay before leaving the highest frequency after the period of maximum load. This mode was specially made to improve interactivity of the systems where operation capabilities are more significant then power consumption, but keeping maximum frequency all the time is not needed. 5. I have reduced default polling interval from 1/2 to 1/4 of second. It is not so important for algorithm math now, but gives better system interactivity. Discussed on: mobile@
2008-11-18 13:24:38 +00:00
Specifies the CPU load percent level when adaptive
mode should begin to degrade performance to save power.
Set of powerd enchancements: 1. Make it more SMP polite. Previous version uses average CPU load that often leads to load underestimation. It make powerd with default configuration unusable on systems with more then 2 CPUs. I propose to use summary load instead of average one. IMO this is the best we can do without specially tuned scheduler. Also as soon as measuring total load on SMP systems is more useful then total idle, I have switched to it. 2. Make powerd's operation independent from number and size of frequency levels. I have added internal frequency counter which translated into real frequencies only on a last stage and only as good as gone. Some systems may have only several power levels, while others - many of them, so adaptation time with previous approach was completely different. 3. As part of previous I have changed adaptive mode to rise frequency on demand up to 2 times and fall on 1/8 per time internal. 4. For desktop (AC-powered) systems I have added one more mode - "hiadaptive". It rises frequency twice faster, drops it 4 times slower, prefers twice lower CPU load and has additional delay before leaving the highest frequency after the period of maximum load. This mode was specially made to improve interactivity of the systems where operation capabilities are more significant then power consumption, but keeping maximum frequency all the time is not needed. 5. I have reduced default polling interval from 1/2 to 1/4 of second. It is not so important for algorithm math now, but gives better system interactivity. Discussed on: mobile@
2008-11-18 13:24:38 +00:00
The default is 50% or lower.
.It Fl n Ar mode
Selects the
.Ar mode
to use normally when the AC line state is unknown.
.It Fl p Ar ival
Specifies a different polling interval (in milliseconds) for AC line state
and system idle levels.
Set of powerd enchancements: 1. Make it more SMP polite. Previous version uses average CPU load that often leads to load underestimation. It make powerd with default configuration unusable on systems with more then 2 CPUs. I propose to use summary load instead of average one. IMO this is the best we can do without specially tuned scheduler. Also as soon as measuring total load on SMP systems is more useful then total idle, I have switched to it. 2. Make powerd's operation independent from number and size of frequency levels. I have added internal frequency counter which translated into real frequencies only on a last stage and only as good as gone. Some systems may have only several power levels, while others - many of them, so adaptation time with previous approach was completely different. 3. As part of previous I have changed adaptive mode to rise frequency on demand up to 2 times and fall on 1/8 per time internal. 4. For desktop (AC-powered) systems I have added one more mode - "hiadaptive". It rises frequency twice faster, drops it 4 times slower, prefers twice lower CPU load and has additional delay before leaving the highest frequency after the period of maximum load. This mode was specially made to improve interactivity of the systems where operation capabilities are more significant then power consumption, but keeping maximum frequency all the time is not needed. 5. I have reduced default polling interval from 1/2 to 1/4 of second. It is not so important for algorithm math now, but gives better system interactivity. Discussed on: mobile@
2008-11-18 13:24:38 +00:00
The default is 250 ms.
.It Fl P Ar pidfile
Specifies an alternative file in which the process ID should be stored.
The default is
.Pa /var/run/powerd.pid .
.It Fl r Ar percent
Set of powerd enchancements: 1. Make it more SMP polite. Previous version uses average CPU load that often leads to load underestimation. It make powerd with default configuration unusable on systems with more then 2 CPUs. I propose to use summary load instead of average one. IMO this is the best we can do without specially tuned scheduler. Also as soon as measuring total load on SMP systems is more useful then total idle, I have switched to it. 2. Make powerd's operation independent from number and size of frequency levels. I have added internal frequency counter which translated into real frequencies only on a last stage and only as good as gone. Some systems may have only several power levels, while others - many of them, so adaptation time with previous approach was completely different. 3. As part of previous I have changed adaptive mode to rise frequency on demand up to 2 times and fall on 1/8 per time internal. 4. For desktop (AC-powered) systems I have added one more mode - "hiadaptive". It rises frequency twice faster, drops it 4 times slower, prefers twice lower CPU load and has additional delay before leaving the highest frequency after the period of maximum load. This mode was specially made to improve interactivity of the systems where operation capabilities are more significant then power consumption, but keeping maximum frequency all the time is not needed. 5. I have reduced default polling interval from 1/2 to 1/4 of second. It is not so important for algorithm math now, but gives better system interactivity. Discussed on: mobile@
2008-11-18 13:24:38 +00:00
Specifies the CPU load percent level where adaptive
mode should consider the CPU running and increase performance.
The default is 75% or higher.
.It Fl v
Verbose mode.
Messages about power changes will be printed to stdout and
.Nm
will operate in the foreground.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr acpi 4 ,
.Xr apm 4 ,
.Xr cpufreq 4
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
utility first appeared in
.Fx 6.0 .
.Sh AUTHORS
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.An -nosplit
.An Colin Percival
first wrote
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.Nm estctrl ,
the utility that
.Nm
is based on.
.An Nate Lawson
then updated it for
.Xr cpufreq 4 ,
2005-02-27 15:49:07 +00:00
added features, and wrote this manual page.
.Sh BUGS
The
.Nm
utility should also power down idle disks and other components besides the CPU.
.Pp
If
.Nm
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is used with
.Pa power_profile ,
they may override each other.
.Pp
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The
.Nm
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utility
should probably use the
.Xr devctl 4
interface instead of polling for AC line state.