My SuSE 10.1 installation when I show "sysinfo:/" it shows my CPU as using 598.59 of my 1.6GHZ Processor.

In KPowersave it shows that it is also using 100% of 598mhz.

Why wouldn't it be reporting the full 1.6GHZ, or how can I make sure my computer uses the full CPU?

SUSE might have defaulted to a 'Dynamic' or 'Powersave' mode - set KPowerSave to use 'Performance' mode to get 1.6 GHz all the time.

I have done this, and it still runs at 598MHZ, and not the full 1.6GHZ. I have tried all power settings.

The Pentium M's use 'Speedstep' technology. What this does is run the processor at a lower frequency until you put a strong enough load on it to warrant a raise. My 1.4GHz Pentium M is running at 598MHz right now but if I burn a cd or watch a movie it runs at 1400MHz or 1.4GHz. This is set up to save battery power and, ultimately, computer life by not running at full speed when you don't need it.

You can disable Speedstep in the BIOS on most laptops. Also, when you type dmesg in a shell you'll see something that pertains to speedstep somewhere in the long list of devices.

No, this isn't the problem here. I have it on Ubuntu Dapper as well. CPU scaling doesn't work, and the system remains pinned at the lowest frequency. It never changes, no matter what governor is used. Looking around in /sys, scaling_max_freq is the same as scaling_min_freq (600000 on a 1.6GHz CPU). dmesg shows the kernel as detecting the CPU as a 597MHz CPU, with a correspondingly low BogoMIPS value.

Man i've been busy, and haven't been able to try to investigate our issue more. Hopefully this week I will..

But glad (well not glad) that someone else is getting it.

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 9
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1600MHz
stepping : 5
cpu MHz : 598.567
cache size : 1024 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pbe est tm2
bogomips : 1198.3

You can see there, that it is also still pegged at the 598MHZ.

I'm surprised as mine works perfectly
I'm on a HP Pavilion DV1000 laptop

Here's the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo when running NOTHING - I'm in the KDE desktop with nothing executing except the console command

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz
stepping : 8
cpu MHz : 1729.813
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe nx est tm2
bogomips : 3464.18



Cheers

-K

You are stepping at 8 where as I am stepping 5.. I wonder if mine is actually a speedstep issue, and it doesn't go over 5 (Dunno, I don't know much about speedstep and ACPI).

Are you running SuSE 10.1? Nothing different about it?

The only differences I see are of course the name, the model, the bogomips and stepping, and I am sure stepping is proportional to bogomips..

Wonder why the model:9 doesn't work correctly.

Is it still at 598MHz when you're burning a cd or watching a video? Mine pretty much stays there except when I'm really pushing it.

Here's my /proc/cpuinfo:

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 9
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz
stepping : 5
cpu MHz : 256.347
cache size : 1024 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pbe est tm2
bogomips : 507.31

It still runs well even at this low frequency.

Here it is again with some more processes running:

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 9
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz
stepping : 5
cpu MHz : 598.144
cache size : 1024 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pbe est tm2
bogomips : 1183.74

So you are going from about 300mhz to 600mhz.. still less then 50% of what your processor should do.

But I did your suggestion and in top it showed I was at about 100% CPU usage, and ran cat /proc/cpuinfo and stil came up with the exact output as before

I would think that you probably have to compile a kernel but I'm no expert. If you'd like, I can give you my config. My cpu does clock up to 1400MHz but only when I'm doing something intensive.

I don't think it's a Kernel issue, but more of a ACPI issue. I have tried a few things and still nothing, I have put in a BUG report to Novell, but I think it's an issue with ACPI personally.

I've narrowed this problem down to the cpufreq_verify_within_limits call inside acpi_processor_ppc_notifier in drivers/acpi/processor_perflib.c in the kernel. I'm not quite sure why the maximum value gets set to the minimum value, but my guess is that for some reason, ppc is getting set to the lowest frequency state instead of the highest frequency state. I've stuffed some printk's in the code and will try to see if this is the problem the next time I reboot.

You can fix this in a hackish way by setting the third argument to that call to your maximum frequency *in kHz* (in my case, 1600000) and compiling the kernel. This should fix the problem, but certainly won't allow a patch to be made for general use.

What Kernel are you using? I have seen this issue in my current kernel of:

# uname -r
2.6.16.13-4-default

and have also had the same thing with 2.6.16.18-20-default (or about that, forget the exact thing).

I will check the file that you have talked about.. once i finish cooking my lunch for tomorrow.