this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
8 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

48207 readers
834 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

On a small form factor PC with an i5-9500, Debian 12, 6.2.16 kernel, running Proxmox, powertop shows the following idle stats:

PowerTOP 2.14     Overview   Idle stats   Frequency stats   Device stats   Tunables   WakeUp


           Pkg(HW)  |            Core(HW) |            CPU(OS) 0
                    |                     | C0 active   2.8%
                    |                     | POLL        0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C1          1.1%    0.4 ms
C2 (pc2)    7.2%    |                     |
C3 (pc3)    5.5%    | C3 (cc3)    0.0%    | C3          0.1%    0.1 ms
C6 (pc6)    1.5%    | C6 (cc6)    1.9%    | C6          2.2%    0.6 ms
C7 (pc7)   75.2%    | C7 (cc7)   92.8%    | C7s         0.0%    0.0 ms
C8 (pc8)    0.0%    |                     | C8         21.5%    2.5 ms
C9 (pc9)    0.0%    |                     | C9          0.0%    0.0 ms
C10 (pc10)  0.0%    |                     |
                    |                     | C10        72.8%   12.5 ms
                    |                     | C1E         0.4%    0.2 ms

                    |            Core(HW) |            CPU(OS) 1
                    |                     | C0 active   1.4%
                    |                     | POLL        0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C1          0.7%    0.9 ms
                    |                     |
                    | C3 (cc3)    0.1%    | C3          0.1%    0.2 ms
                    | C6 (cc6)    1.0%    | C6          1.1%    0.8 ms
                    | C7 (cc7)   96.3%    | C7s         0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C8         18.9%    2.9 ms
                    |                     | C9          0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     |
                    |                     | C10        78.3%   24.8 ms
                    |                     | C1E         0.0%    0.0 ms
...

On a custom-built server with an i5-13500, Asus Pro WS W680M-ACE SE motherboard, Unraid (which uses Slackware), 6.1.38 kernel, it shows the following output:

PowerTOP 2.15     Overview   Idle stats   Frequency stats   Device stats   Tunables   WakeUp


           Pkg(HW)  |            Core(HW) |            CPU(OS) 0   CPU(OS) 1
                    |                     | C0 active   5.9%        0.9%
                    |                     | POLL        0.1%    0.0 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C1_ACPI    14.2%    0.2 ms  1.0%    0.1 ms
C2 (pc2)    0.0%    |                     | C2_ACPI    39.2%    0.8 ms 27.0%    0.9 ms
C3 (pc3)    0.0%    | C3 (cc3)    0.0%    | C3_ACPI    33.6%    1.2 ms 69.7%    3.0 ms
C6 (pc6)    0.0%    | C6 (cc6)    1.1%    |
C7 (pc7)    0.0%    | C7 (cc7)    0.0%    |
C8 (pc8)    0.0%    |                     |
C9 (pc9)    0.0%    |                     |
C10 (pc10)  0.0%    |                     |

                    |            Core(HW) |            CPU(OS) 2   CPU(OS) 3
                    |                     | C0 active  10.4%        0.5%
                    |                     | POLL        0.0%    0.0 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C1_ACPI    17.4%    0.2 ms  0.4%    0.2 ms
                    |                     | C2_ACPI    14.3%    0.8 ms  4.9%    0.6 ms
                    | C3 (cc3)    0.0%    | C3_ACPI    41.8%    5.4 ms 93.5%    5.5 ms
                    | C6 (cc6)    5.9%    |
                    | C7 (cc7)   26.7%    |
                    |                     |
                    |                     |
                    |                     |

                    |            Core(HW) |            CPU(OS) 4   CPU(OS) 5
                    |                     | C0 active  11.7%        0.2%
                    |                     | POLL        0.0%    0.1 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C1_ACPI    19.0%    0.1 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
                    |                     | C2_ACPI    11.3%    0.7 ms  0.0%    0.0 ms
                    | C3 (cc3)    0.0%    | C3_ACPI    39.6%    7.7 ms 99.6%    7.0 ms
                    | C6 (cc6)    1.3%    |
                    | C7 (cc7)   25.4%    |
...

Both systems have C-states enabled in the BIOS.

I have a few questions I'm hoping someone can help with:

  • Why does the older system show more C-states in the right-most "CPU(OS)" column?
  • What does it mean when they're suffixed with "_ACPI" like in the output from the new system?
  • How do I debug the new system not hitting any CPU package C-states?

I can't find any documentation about this, neither on the man page nor on Intel's site (the official powertop URL https://01.org/powertop doesn't go anywhere useful any more).

Thanks!

top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] rotopenguin@infosec.pub 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It might be that the newer system has a piece of hardware that secretly blocks out higher C-states. I had that with Intel VST/Raid on my Raptor Lake Laptop. That's probably not so big a deal on a server that you were never going to fold closed and tuck in a backpack.

[–] dan@upvote.au 1 points 1 year ago

I want to save power on my server too! I've got solar power, but saving power on my servers means I can use that power for other things.

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 1 year ago

This is the reply I got from the maintainer of powertop about the output from the new system (https://github.com/fenrus75/powertop/issues/140):

it means your kernel does not have intel_idle support for your CPU ... which is unusually unless you're running an older kernel on newer hardware

needs some more investigation I guess.