cpufreq: ondemand: Change the calculation of target frequency

The ondemand governor calculates load in terms of frequency and
increases it only if load_freq is greater than up_threshold
multiplied by the current or average frequency.  This appears to
produce oscillations of frequency between min and max because,
for example, a relatively small load can easily saturate minimum
frequency and lead the CPU to the max.  Then, it will decrease
back to the min due to small load_freq.

Change the calculation method of load and target frequency on the
basis of the following two observations:

 - Load computation should not depend on the current or average
   measured frequency.  For example, absolute load of 80% at 100MHz
   is not necessarily equivalent to 8% at 1000MHz in the next
   sampling interval.

 - It should be possible to increase the target frequency to any
   value present in the frequency table proportional to the absolute
   load, rather than to the max only, so that:

   Target frequency = C * load

   where we take C = policy->cpuinfo.max_freq / 100.

Tested on Intel i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz and on Quad core 1500MHz Krait.
Phoronix benchmark of Linux Kernel Compilation 3.1 test shows an
increase ~1.5% in performance. cpufreq_stats (time_in_state) shows
that middle frequencies are used more, with this patch.  Highest
and lowest frequencies were used less by ~9%.

[rjw: We have run multiple other tests on kernels with this
 change applied and in the vast majority of cases it turns out
 that the resulting performance improvement also leads to reduced
 consumption of energy.  The change is additionally justified by
 the overall simplification of the code in question.]

Signed-off-by: Stratos Karafotis <stratosk@semaphore.gr>
Acked-by: Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 9 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_governor.c b/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_governor.c
index 7b839a8db2a7..7409dbd1d897 100644
--- a/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_governor.c
+++ b/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_governor.c
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ void dbs_check_cpu(struct dbs_data *dbs_data, int cpu)
 
 	policy = cdbs->cur_policy;
 
-	/* Get Absolute Load (in terms of freq for ondemand gov) */
+	/* Get Absolute Load */
 	for_each_cpu(j, policy->cpus) {
 		struct cpu_dbs_common_info *j_cdbs;
 		u64 cur_wall_time, cur_idle_time;
@@ -104,14 +104,6 @@ void dbs_check_cpu(struct dbs_data *dbs_data, int cpu)
 
 		load = 100 * (wall_time - idle_time) / wall_time;
 
-		if (dbs_data->cdata->governor == GOV_ONDEMAND) {
-			int freq_avg = __cpufreq_driver_getavg(policy, j);
-			if (freq_avg <= 0)
-				freq_avg = policy->cur;
-
-			load *= freq_avg;
-		}
-
 		if (load > max_load)
 			max_load = load;
 	}