atom based servers

[David Rawling]

Robin Becker opined:

...
>I have one of the Acer ION gadgets running at home and that also uses the Atom 
>330. I cannot find any nice way to reduce the power consumption though as the 
>330 doesn't seem to support speedstep and my cpu is always running at 68C. Does
>your board provide any power control opportunity?

sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq reports that my CPU is running at 202 or 404MHz generally:

timeserver  ~ 127# sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq
dev.cpu.0.freq: 404

timeserver  ~ 128# sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq_levels
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 1618/-1 1415/-1 1213/-1 1011/-1 809/-1 606/-1 404/-1 202/-1

I notice the only C states are C0 and C1, and that it's generally running in C1:

timeserver  ~ 136# sysctl dev.cpu.0
dev.cpu.0.%desc: ACPI CPU
dev.cpu.0.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.0.%location: handle=\_PR_.CPU0
dev.cpu.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=none _UID=0
dev.cpu.0.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.0.freq: 202
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 1618/-1 1415/-1 1213/-1 1011/-1 809/-1 606/-1 404/-1 202/-1
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/0
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00% last 500us

lmmon is not particularly helpful for anything on this board, but that could be
because I'm using the Generic kernel and /dev/smb0 is not present:

timeserver  ~ 134# lmmon -i

 Motherboard Temp               Voltages

 255C / 491F / 528K        Vcore1:   +3.984V
                           Vcore2:   +3.984V
    Fan Speeds             + 3.3V:   +3.984V
                           + 5.0V:   +6.654V
    1:    0 rpm            +12.0V:  +15.938V
    2:    0 rpm            -12.0V:  -15.938V
    3:    0 rpm            - 5.0V:   -6.654V

Do you have any other suggestions of tools I could use to help answer your question?
Perhaps the lack of other C states is causing the excess power consumption (or
perhaps your system is more heavily loaded)? I'm assuming for the sake of simplicity
that powerd is already enabled (I'm running with powerd_flags="-i 85 -r 60 -p 100")?

Dave.
--
David Rawling
PD Consulting And Security
Email: djr at pdconsec.net