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jwhendy

Member

Registered: 2010-04-01

Posts: 621

i7 chip using ondemand governor -- scaling all but one core?

Hi,

I've setup cpu frequency scaling per the wiki as I did on my last computer, which had a core 2 duo. I just noticed that conky shows cpu0 at 1.6GHz while cpu1 was at 933MHz, so I looked into it.

$ cpufreq-info 
cpufrequtils 008: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to cpufreq@vger.kernel.org, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
  hardware limits: 933 MHz - 1.60 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.60 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.47 GHz, 1.33 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 933 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: ondemand, userspace, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 933 MHz and 1.60 GHz.
                  The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 1.60 GHz.

To spare you the long output, all of the other say exactly the same thing except for the last line. Cores 1-7 show:

 current policy: frequency should be within 933 MHz and 1.60 GHz.
                  The governor "ondemand" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
current CPU frequency is 933 MHz.

Any thoughts? I have acpi stuff built in, so I have no ondemand governor per se, but everything reads as if that's what actually being used... and the others are obviously scaling. Just to be certain, I just tried:

$ sudo cpufreq-set -c 1 -g performance

and saw conky show cpu1 spike up to 1.6GHz as well. Re-running the command to set it back to ondemand dropped it back down to 933MHz.

What else can I try? I'm thinking this isn't normal to have one core going full bore all the time? I did have a ondemand cutoff % set in rc.local. I commented it out and will reboot in a bit to see if that helps...

Thanks for any suggestions.

current CPU frequency is 933 MHz.

Last edited by jwhendy (2011-04-20 16:01:28)

jwhendy

Member

Registered: 2010-04-01

Posts: 621

Re: i7 chip using ondemand governor -- scaling all but one core?

I just recompiled my kernel with ondemand as the default and it's now working, CPU0 and all the rest. Not sure what was up, but if no one posts any time soon for other suggestions, I'll just mark it solved even though I'm curious why this was the case before.

Last edited by jwhendy (2011-07-30 03:56:40)