New Powerbooks, slow

Message

Kristo · Post by **Kristo** » Mon May 24, 2004 3:17 pm

Hi Everyone,

Got myself one of these new Powerbooks (15 inch, 1.33ghz) and seems like its running kinda slow. Judging from the bogomips thingy of 663.55 and the fact that it ses the shiny thing with a unknown cpu, yeah, I can understand it. Also, it shows up as a Powerbook 5,4, the old ones (which I also have beside me) are 5,2. Took over 24 hours to compile xfree/kde....

I am running kernel 2.6.4, just wondering if anyone else has seen this, what kernel/patch is needed (I reckon 2.6.6 or 2.6.7 will be the one)

so yeah, any info?

homar · Post by **homar** » Mon May 24, 2004 5:03 pm

The latest Powerbooks/Ibooks only run at half the processor speed. Unfortunately the same hack for the previous generation *books can't be applied to the new ones. So, it could be a while before they're working at full speed.

Updating to 2.6.6 will display correct values in /proc/cpuinfo.

numerodix · Post by **numerodix** » Mon May 24, 2004 5:04 pm

homar wrote:The latest Powerbooks/Ibooks only run at half the processor speed. Unfortunately the same hack for the previous generation *books can't be applied to the new ones. So, it could be a while before they're working at full speed.

Updating to 2.6.6 will display correct values in /proc/cpuinfo.

half speed? why is that?

Kristo · Post by **Kristo** » Mon May 24, 2004 5:31 pm

yeah, I already updated, running 2.6.6, looks good, but still slow....bah.

Well, back to OSX for a while....

stimuli · Post by **stimuli** » Mon May 24, 2004 8:05 pm

cpufreqd does not work on newer G4s?

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Mon May 24, 2004 11:43 pm

I have been looking at this on my iBook G4, which I think uses the same CPU as the new PowerBooks (7447A). These CPUs have a thing called dynamic frequency scaling, and as far as I can tell, it is on when you come out of openfirmware, and the kernel does not yet change it, so yeah, even on 2.6.6 the CPU is running half speed even though cpuinfo reports full speed. At least I think this is what happens, I still need to double check some stuff.

I have tried to change the kernel to turn off dynamic frequency scaling, but so far I can't get a stable system with it. If I clear the DFS bit on boot, the system locks up when it gets to INIT, and if get cpufreq to clear it, the system locks up under load. Obviously I'm missing something . . . I plan to do a bit more messing around and then find some kernel gurus to ask about it.

brodo · Post by **brodo** » Wed May 26, 2004 6:58 pm

Unfortunately, I'm still too x86-centric, so I have no clue what causes the lockup ... however, Benjamin Herrenschmidt [author of ppc-cpufreq drivers] might be somebody to ask. also, please cc cpufreq@www.linux.org.uk so that other cpufreq developers and I don't need to stumble on some lkml post and/or gentoo forum entry. Thanks.

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Wed May 26, 2004 11:57 pm

Ah, I didn't think about looking for a cpufreq list. I posted to lkml before I read your reply, but I'll keep cpufreq informed if I come up with anything useful. Unfortunately it looks to be a subscriber only list . . .

brodo · Post by **brodo** » Thu May 27, 2004 7:44 am

toojays wrote:I posted to lkml before I read your reply,

Actually, your post to lkml was first, then I replied here...

toojays wrote:Unfortunately it looks to be a subscriber only list . . .

You can post without being subscribed, but you can't read the archives due to British laws...

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 11:29 pm

The patch for the iBook G4 is here. It may be worth giving it a try on the new PowerBooks as well . . . just change the machine string from PowerBook6,5 to whatever is appropriate. If anyone tries it, please let us know how it goes.

This is probably not the final version of this patch---apparently Darwin does some stuff which this patch doesn't, so I will have a look at what they do sometime and maybe make a new patch.

cuc · Post by **cuc** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 1:27 am

tried the patch against 2.6.4-pegasos0 kernel...
works fine for me... thanks!

but one thing i wonder is: my cpu runs on 1066Mhz? thought it was only 1033Mhz... :)

Kristo · Post by **Kristo** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 9:17 pm

It works on my powerbook just fine (had to change the powerbook 6,something to 5,4)
now I get

bash-2.05b$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
cpu : 7447A, altivec supported
clock : 1333MHz
revision : 1.1 (pvr 8003 0101)
bogomips : 1327.10
machine : PowerBook5,4
motherboard : PowerBook5,4 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh
detected as : 287 (Unknown Intrepid-based)
pmac flags : 00000008
L2 cache : 512K unified
memory : 768MB
pmac-generation : NewWorld

so, sitting pretty, feels much faster.

rock on

sienarot · Post by **sienarot** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 9:29 pm

How can you tell that the G4 processors are running at half speed?

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 12:13 am

First point to note is that not all G4 processors are the same. This thread is about the 7447A processor. The 7447A has a power management mode called dynamic frequency scaling (DFS) which halves the clock. So in my case, I found that the chip was running at half frequency by looking at the register where DFS gets set, and realising that it was turned on.

In general though, I think that for any G4 chip, the bogomips you get from /proc/cpuinfo comes out to be roughly the same as your clock speed. So if you have a 1 GHz G4, and your bogomips is only 500 or so, it's probably only running at half speed.

taliesin666 · Post by **taliesin666** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 7:53 am

hi

seems not working for me

Code: Select all

bash-2.05b# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
cpu             : 7447A, altivec supported
clock           : 1066MHz
revision        : 1.1 (pvr 8003 0101)
bogomips        : 530.43
machine         : PowerBook6,5
motherboard     : PowerBook6,5 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh
detected as     : 287 (iBook G4)
pmac flags      : 0000000a
L2 cache        : 512K unified
memory          : 512MB
pmac-generation : NewWorld

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:44 am

taliesin666, I'm not sure how it could be failing for you. Can you give me any more information? Are there any messages about "PowerMac CPU frequency driver" in your dmesg? Is "CONFIG_CPU_FREQ=y" in your kernel config?

One thing I often have to double-check is that I am actually using the kernel I think I am. Run "uname -a" and check that the time matches when you compiled your kernel.

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:53 am

I have posted a new version of the patch here.

This version provides a tiny performance improvement under certain situations when you're running in high speed mode.

Kristo, I've added the PowerBook5,4 check in, but could you check one more thing for me? Look in your dmesg for a string like "Found Uninorth memory controller & host bridge, revision: XXX". What is the revision number on your machine? On my iBook it is revision 210. Hopefully yours is >= that, otherwise the patch needs to be changed slightly.

Kristo · Post by **Kristo** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:15 pm

yeah, its rev 210, so its fine.

worked fine as well.

it all feels much faster....plus the main way i realized it was running slow was the almost 24 hours it took kde etc to compile...a quick peek at /proc/cpuinfo show 600something mhz....so i left this alone until i peeked back here and saw this patch, now i can get back to using linux...next stop, mol.

thanks again for the patch.

Kristo · Post by **Kristo** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:51 pm

one other thing, just to show the speed diff..

shiny root # genlop -t xfree
* x11-base/xfree

Sat May 22 14:46:22 2004 --> x11-base/xfree-4.3.99.902-r2
merge time: 2 hours, 14 minutes, and 45 seconds.

Thu Jun 10 15:56:15 2004 --> x11-base/xfree-4.3.99.902-r2
merge time: 1 hour, 3 minutes, and 5 seconds.

just to give you a little bit more of an idea

nicoske · Post by **nicoske** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:07 pm

Works fine on a ibook G4 1ghz:

Code: Select all

processor       : 0
cpu             : 7447A, altivec supported
clock           : 1066MHz
revision        : 1.1 (pvr 8003 0101)
bogomips        : 1060.86
machine         : PowerBook6,5
motherboard     : PowerBook6,5 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh
detected as     : 287 (iBook G4)
pmac flags      : 0000000a
L2 cache        : 512K unified
memory          : 256MB
pmac-generation : NewWorld

Is this has been submitted to the official kernel tree ?

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:36 am

nicoske,

I have been discussing this patch with benh on the linuxpcc-dev mailing list. I've never worked with the kernel development process before, so I don't know how long it could be before it gets into the mainline.

taliesin666 · Post by **taliesin666** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 1:54 pm

toojays

Thanks for your help. You're right, i was using the wrong kernel !

but got another problem. The patch halfed my processor speed !

Code: Select all

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
cpu             : 7447A, altivec supported
clock           : 533MHz
revision        : 1.1 (pvr 8003 0101)
bogomips        : 530.43
machine         : PowerBook6,5
motherboard     : PowerBook6,5 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh
detected as     : 287 (iBook G4)
pmac flags      : 0000000a
L2 cache        : 512K unified
memory          : 768MB
pmac-generation : NewWorld

got "CONFIG_CPU_FREQ=y" in my kernel config and no messages about "PowerMac CPU frequency driver" in my dmesg just a message "Processor NAP mode on idle enabled"

That's all

Any idees ?

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 9:19 am

Hmm . . . strange . . . if you have cpuinfo reporting the correct frequency, it means that at least some of my code is executing. Just for the record, my config options atm are:

Code: Select all

CONFIG_CPU_FREQ=y
# CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_PROC_INTF is not set
# CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_PERFORMANCE is not set
CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_DEFAULT_GOV_USERSPACE=y
CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_GOV_PERFORMANCE=y
CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_GOV_POWERSAVE=y
CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_GOV_USERSPACE=y
# CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_24_API is not set
CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_PMAC=y
CONFIG_CPU_FREQ_TABLE=y

The CPU frequency message comes a fair way after the NAP message in dmesg, for me it is a bit after the radeonfb stuff. So you don't have such a directory as /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ ?

taliesin666 · Post by **taliesin666** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 8:19 am

toojays,

with your config, got the Processor message :

Code: Select all

Registering PowerMac CPU frequency driver
Low: 533 Mhz, High: 1066 Mhz, Boot: 533 Mhz, switch method: DFS

humm seems processor speed always at 533Mhz

Code: Select all

processor	: 0
cpu		: 7447A, altivec supported
clock		: 533MHz
revision	: 1.1 (pvr 8003 0101)
bogomips	: 530.43
machine		: PowerBook6,5
motherboard	: PowerBook6,5 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh 
detected as	: 287 (iBook G4)
pmac flags	: 0000000a
L2 cache	: 512K unified
memory		: 768MB
pmac-generation	: NewWorld

now got the /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ directory

what else ? do you need more info ?

Thanks for your help

toojays · Post by **toojays** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:33 am

Ah, okay, it looks like the patch is working fine, just that you don't know how to change frequency. There is some info on it in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/cpu-freq/user-guide.txt, but I recommend to just emerge a daemon to take care of it for you.

In my case I am using cpudyn, which is probably the easiest to setup. It checks the cpu load every 10ms, and if the CPU is under heavy load, it switches to high frequency. When the load drops, it switches back to low frequency.

If you always run at high frequency, you will probably notice the fan come on more often (although IMHO the default fan limits are too conservative anyway).