A Proper Solution To The Linux ASPM Problem

[Michael]

at least can you answer if they are taken care of???

In the mainline kernel, no, I haven't seen any patches.

[LinuxID10T]

That's what they did do. They introduced a power regression to get rid of a stability regression. It was the lesser of two evils until they came up with a proper solution ie try any copy what windows does

I hardly see it being the "lesser of two evils." Considering the issue only effected a very, very small percentage of people, they killed battery life for anyone with a laptop. So no, I don't see it as the lesser of two evils. My laptop went from 5 hours of battery life to 2.5 hours, how is that not more serious considering how many people it effects?

[droidhacker]

This is so widespread and well known that the only person in the universe who bitches about it is.... Michael from Phoronix. For everybody else, its "meh."

[Need4Speed]

The change in the Linux 2.6.38 kernel disabled ASPM unless the BIOS advertised support for it, but it turns out a vast number of systems supporting ASPM do not actually advertise it from the BIOS

What about PCIe hotplug support? I've tested hotplugging on a few Intel desktop and server motherboards with an ExpressCard adapter board. Strangely I could get hotplug going on a Core2Duo board (with PCIEHP force option) but not on a Corei7 board.

The only way I could get ExpressCard hotplug working reliably was using ACPI hotplugging on laptop ExpressCard slots...

[LinuxID10T]

This is so widespread and well known that the only person in the universe who bitches about it is.... Michael from Phoronix. For everybody else, its "meh."

I am pretty sure other people bitch about it too. As to the kernel devs reaction to Michael's article wasn't great. I will admit, Michael does sometimes blow an issue out of proportion, however, as a laptop user, in this case I completely agree with him. It was a pretty damn major regression and the kernel devs sat there scratching their asses for months rather than fixing the damn issue. I know there was questions as to how to go about fixing the issue, but in all reality, it was placed on the backburner. The fact that a mere 60 lines of code fixed this goes to show how easy it should have been.

[Xilanaz]

The fact that a mere 60 lines of code fixed this goes to show how easy it should have been.

its always easy to fix something when you know how to go about it and it took them time to figure out a different approach and to see what they did wrong.

as for your previous comment, if a stability regression is fixed and causes a power regression then yes they went about it the right way, of course its not nice your laptop used more power but if it was your laptop that would become unstable you would be ranting even more.

it seems to be fixed, be happy and if you can do it better and faster I am pretty sure there is a job for you waiting with the kernel developers.

[DeepDayze]

I'd venture to say ASPM works fine on Windows as the BIOS in most cases is coded to hand off _OSC control to Windows only and not to any other OS including Linux. That patch is a good solution and to enable ASPM for DEVICES that support it rather than for the BIOS then that's a usable solution IMHO.

Nice work Michael!

[89c51]

LOL the new way to fix problems in the linux world just force people to ask for permit if they want talk about it.

Yes thats the solution just make it against the LAW no more talk about problems at all.

this is the new age of bug-free Linux solutions. there is no bug because all bugs are against the LAW!

sources claim that Linus Torvalds himself threatened to kill Michael's family if he reveals the regression to public

[Cyborg16]

sources claim that Linus Torvalds himself threatened to kill Michael's family if he reveals the regression to public

Come on, enough with the rumours! Well done Michael but also well done Mathew Garrett!

[felipevsw]

Clarify

Just to clarify this to me, and many others: I thought this was a Sandy Bridge problem, but I saw here that the test was not done on a Sandy Bridge processor, right?
At what point older family of processors this ASPM issue began? Or should I look to my motherboard to see if it has PCI Express slot, so it is affected?
For exemple I have a ThinkPad T61 with a Core 2 Duo T7300, do I get affected by this issue?