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authorRicardo Neri <ricardo.neri-calderon@linux.intel.com>2026-04-25 00:41:13 +0300
committerRafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>2026-05-13 22:39:38 +0300
commitee047fc7a2da90554410128195058c409a391d43 (patch)
tree5b3c1a5fa8eba4269a0709e1596bc27bbc4db93e
parent5d6919055dec134de3c40167a490f33c74c12581 (diff)
downloadlinux-ee047fc7a2da90554410128195058c409a391d43.tar.xz
Documentation: intel_pstate: Fix description of asymmetric packing with SMT
Patchset [1], including commits 046a5a95c3b0 ("x86/sched/itmt: Give all SMT siblings of a core the same priority") 995998ebdebd ("x86/sched: Remove SD_ASYM_PACKING from the SMT domain flags") overhauled asym_packing handling in the scheduler on x86 hybrid processors with SMT. It removed SD_ASYM_PACKING from the x86 SMT scheduling domain and made all SMT siblings of a core share the same priority. As a result, asym_packing operates only across physical cores, spreading tasks among them and only using idle SMT siblings once all physical cores are busy. Fix the documentation to reflect this behavior. Fixes: f20af84c29b2 ("cpufreq: intel_pstate: Document hybrid processor support") Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230406203148.19182-1-ricardo.neri-calderon@linux.intel.com [1] Signed-off-by: Ricardo Neri <ricardo.neri-calderon@linux.intel.com> [ rjw: Changelog edits ] Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260424-rneri-fix-intel-pstate-doc-smt-asym-packing-v1-1-317bf7d5c362@linux.intel.com Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/pm/intel_pstate.rst11
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 5 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/pm/intel_pstate.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/pm/intel_pstate.rst
index fde967b0c2e0..25fe5d88fea6 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/pm/intel_pstate.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/pm/intel_pstate.rst
@@ -355,11 +355,12 @@ HyperThreading (HT) in the context of Intel processors, is enabled on at least
one core, ``intel_pstate`` assigns performance-based priorities to CPUs. Namely,
the priority of a given CPU reflects its highest HWP performance level which
causes the CPU scheduler to generally prefer more performant CPUs, so the less
-performant CPUs are used when the other ones are fully loaded. However, SMT
-siblings (that is, logical CPUs sharing one physical core) are treated in a
-special way such that if one of them is in use, the effective priority of the
-other ones is lowered below the priorities of the CPUs located in the other
-physical cores.
+performant CPUs are used when the other ones are fully loaded. SMT siblings
+(that is, logical CPUs sharing one physical core) are given the same priority.
+The scheduler can pull tasks from lower-priority cores and place them on any
+sibling. Since the scheduler spreads tasks among physical cores, tasks will be
+placed on the SMT siblings of physical cores only after all physical cores are
+busy.
This approach maximizes performance in the majority of cases, but unfortunately
it also leads to excessive energy usage in some important scenarios, like video