ipmi: add parameter to limit CPU usage in kipmid

In some cases kipmid can use a lot of CPU.  This adds a way to tune the
CPU used by kipmid to help in those cases.  By setting kipmid_max_busy_us
to a value between 100 and 500, it is possible to bring down kipmid CPU
load to practically 0 without loosing too much ipmi throughput
performance.  Not setting the value, or setting the value to zero,
operation is unaffected.

Signed-off-by: Martin Wilck <martin.wilck@ts.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Corey Minyard <cminyard@mvista.com>
Cc: Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/IPMI.txt b/Documentation/IPMI.txt
index bc38283379f0..69dd29ed824e 100644
--- a/Documentation/IPMI.txt
+++ b/Documentation/IPMI.txt
@@ -365,6 +365,7 @@ You can change this at module load time (for a module) with:
        regshifts=<shift1>,<shift2>,...
        slave_addrs=<addr1>,<addr2>,...
        force_kipmid=<enable1>,<enable2>,...
+       kipmid_max_busy_us=<ustime1>,<ustime2>,...
        unload_when_empty=[0|1]
 
 Each of these except si_trydefaults is a list, the first item for the
@@ -433,6 +434,7 @@ kernel command line as:
        ipmi_si.regshifts=<shift1>,<shift2>,...
        ipmi_si.slave_addrs=<addr1>,<addr2>,...
        ipmi_si.force_kipmid=<enable1>,<enable2>,...
+       ipmi_si.kipmid_max_busy_us=<ustime1>,<ustime2>,...
 
 It works the same as the module parameters of the same names.
 
@@ -450,6 +452,16 @@ force this thread on or off.  If you force it off and don't have
 interrupts, the driver will run VERY slowly.  Don't blame me,
 these interfaces suck.
 
+Unfortunately, this thread can use a lot of CPU depending on the
+interface's performance.  This can waste a lot of CPU and cause
+various issues with detecting idle CPU and using extra power.  To
+avoid this, the kipmid_max_busy_us sets the maximum amount of time, in
+microseconds, that kipmid will spin before sleeping for a tick.  This
+value sets a balance between performance and CPU waste and needs to be
+tuned to your needs.  Maybe, someday, auto-tuning will be added, but
+that's not a simple thing and even the auto-tuning would need to be
+tuned to the user's desired performance.
+
 The driver supports a hot add and remove of interfaces.  This way,
 interfaces can be added or removed after the kernel is up and running.
 This is done using /sys/modules/ipmi_si/parameters/hotmod, which is a