On Wednesday 29 December 2010 20:51:05 Bill Longman wrote:
> > Yeah, the cpufreq utils show all the relevant information. I use the
> > acpi-cpufreq driver and when I didn't use it nothing happened.
> > cpufreq-aperf shows each CPU at 1.2GHz. I'll look at the EIST in BIOS,
> > too. Thanks for the pointers.
> 
> Here's an interesting item:
> 
> 12:41:00# cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/bios_limit
> 1199000
> 
> which sort of jives with the "asserted by call to hardware" in the
> cpufreq-info section:
> analyzing CPU 3:
>   driver: acpi-cpufreq
>   CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 2 3
>   CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 3
>   maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
>   hardware limits: 1.20 GHz - 2.67 GHz
>   available frequency steps: 2.67 GHz, 2.67 GHz, 2.53 GHz, 2.40 GHz, 2.27
> GHz, 2.13 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.87 GHz, 1.73 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.47 GHz, 1.33 GHz,
> 1.20 GHz
>   available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace,
> powersave, performance
>   current policy: frequency should be within 1.20 GHz and 1.20 GHz.
>                   The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
>                   within this range.
>   current CPU frequency is 1.20 GHz (asserted by call to hardware).
>   cpufreq stats: 2.67 GHz:0.25%, 2.67 GHz:0.01%, 2.53 GHz:0.01%, 2.40
> GHz:0.01%, 2.27 GHz:0.01%, 2.13 GHz:0.01%, 2.00 GHz:0.01%, 1.87 GHz:0.01%,
> 1.73 GHz:0.01%, 1.60 GHz:0.01%, 1.47 GHz:0.01%, 1.33 GHz:0.01%, 1.20
> GHz:99.61%  (28)
> 
> So, why are there micro-spikes of higher frequencies in the above stats?
> The stats section says there are only five transitions.

Just a wild guess:  are you running some desktop applet that manages the cpu 
frequency and is stuck on manual with a low setting?

I have the i7 Q 720 @ 1.60GHz, which is supposedly go up to 2.8G with turbo 
boost, but can't say that I have ever seen it going that high ... not sure if 
there's a setting somewhere I should tweak.  This is from cpuinfo:

=========================
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 30
model name	: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU       Q 720  @ 1.60GHz
stepping	: 5
cpu MHz		: 931.000
cache size	: 6144 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 8
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		: 0
initial apicid	: 0
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 11
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov 
pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm 
constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf 
pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 
popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips	: 3192.42
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
=========================
As you can see power management is also blank.

These are my frequencies:

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_*
1597000 1596000 1463000 1330000 1197000 1064000 931000 
conservative userspace powersave ondemand performance 
931000
acpi-cpufreq
ondemand
1597000
931000
<unsupported>

PS.  Any ideas what makes that turbo thingy kick in?
-- 
Regards,
Mick