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authorLen Brown <len.brown@intel.com>2013-02-10 01:38:39 -0500
committerLen Brown <len.brown@intel.com>2013-02-10 03:03:41 -0500
commit69fb3676df3329a7142803bb3502fa59dc0db2e3 (patch)
treee2cfa5a6513e07d01e6b1fe935f09be8300d7bde /Documentation
parent6a377ddc4e4ede2eeb9cd46ada23bbe417704fc9 (diff)
x86 idle: remove mwait_idle() and "idle=mwait" cmdline param
mwait_idle() is a C1-only idle loop intended to be more efficient than HLT, starting on Pentium-4 HT-enabled processors. But mwait_idle() has been replaced by the more general mwait_idle_with_hints(), which handles both C1 and deeper C-states. ACPI processor_idle and intel_idle use only mwait_idle_with_hints(), and no longer use mwait_idle(). Here we simplify the x86 native idle code by removing mwait_idle(), and the "idle=mwait" bootparam used to invoke it. Since Linux 3.0 there has been a boot-time warning when "idle=mwait" was invoked saying it would be removed in 2012. This removal was also noted in the (now removed:-) feature-removal-schedule.txt. After this change, kernels configured with (CONFIG_ACPI=n && CONFIG_INTEL_IDLE=n) when run on hardware that supports MWAIT will simply use HLT. If MWAIT is desired on those systems, cpuidle and the cpuidle drivers above can be enabled. Signed-off-by: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> Cc: x86@kernel.org
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt7
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 363e348bff9..3b0cd1e612d 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -1039,16 +1039,11 @@ bytes respectively. Such letter suffixes can also be entirely omitted.
Claim all unknown PCI IDE storage controllers.
idle= [X86]
- Format: idle=poll, idle=mwait, idle=halt, idle=nomwait
+ Format: idle=poll, idle=halt, idle=nomwait
Poll forces a polling idle loop that can slightly
improve the performance of waking up a idle CPU, but
will use a lot of power and make the system run hot.
Not recommended.
- idle=mwait: On systems which support MONITOR/MWAIT but
- the kernel chose to not use it because it doesn't save
- as much power as a normal idle loop, use the
- MONITOR/MWAIT idle loop anyways. Performance should be
- the same as idle=poll.
idle=halt: Halt is forced to be used for CPU idle.
In such case C2/C3 won't be used again.
idle=nomwait: Disable mwait for CPU C-states