cpuidle: add a repeating pattern detector to the menu governor

Currently, the menu governor uses the (corrected) next timer as key item
for predicting the idle duration.

It turns out that there are specific cases where this breaks down: There
are cases where we have a very repetitive pattern of idle durations, where
the idle period is pretty much the same, for reasons completely unrelated
to the next timer event.  Examples of such repeating patterns are network
loads with irq mitigation, the mouse moving but in theory also the wifi
beacons.

This patch adds a relatively simple detector for such repeating patterns,
where the standard deviation of the last 8 idle periods is compared to a
threshold.

With this extra predictor in place, measurements show that the DECAY
factor can now be increased (the decaying average will now decay slower)
to get an even more stable result.

[arjan@infradead.org: fix bug identified by Frank]
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Corrado Zoccolo <czoccolo@gmail.com>
Cc: Frank Rowand <frank.rowand@am.sony.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
1 file changed