Bug 1035724

Summary: audio codecs 100% usage
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Jeremy Harris <jeharris>
Component: powertopAssignee: Jaroslav Škarvada <jskarvad>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 20CC: jskarvad, metherid
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Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2013-11-28 11:44:50 UTC Type: Bug
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Jeremy Harris 2013-11-28 10:45:55 UTC
Description of problem:

  Filed under powertop, but likely not its fault.  Powertop is showing two audio codecs (hwC0D3: Intel & Realtek) at 100% usage when I'm not running any audio. This is on a Lenovo T530; the fan is spinning gently.  If I run a video via vlc the Realtek item goes away (the Intel remains).


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

 Powertop 2.4
 3.11.8-300.fc20.x86_64


How reproducible:

 Only noticed today, but the fan's been spinning all morning.


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot system
2. Note niggling fan noise
3. Install powertop

Actual results:

  Codecs apparently spinning


Expected results:

  Quiet fan


Additional info:

PowerTOP 2.4      Overview   Idle stats   Frequency stats   Device stats   Tunable

Summary: 460.7 wakeups/second,  49.0 GPU ops/seconds, 0.0 VFS ops/sec and 4.1% CPU

                Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
             27.0 ms/s     380.4        Process        /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox
            100.0%                      Device         Audio codec hwC0D0: Realtek
            100.0%                      Device         Audio codec hwC0D3: Intel
            960.5 rpm                   Device         Laptop fan
             10.6 ms/s      24.3        Process        /usr/bin/Xorg :0 -backgroun

Comment 1 Jaroslav Škarvada 2013-11-28 11:01:09 UTC
Can you fix it in the "Tunables" tab, by enabling the "audio codec power management"?

Comment 2 Jaroslav Škarvada 2013-11-28 11:04:30 UTC
This can typically save you less than 1 W of power. But this shouldn't make your fan busy. I guess your problem is elsewhere, e.g. kernel/io load or from the above log, the firefox. The 380.4 wake ups is quite a lot.

Comment 3 Jeremy Harris 2013-11-28 11:30:46 UTC
Turning on power-control of the audio codecs does remove them from the list, so the bug title is wrong.  Sorry about the noise.

Taking out one specific tab from firefox dropped the firefox events down to 40/sec.  However, the fan noise remains (there's a trickle of warm air from the exhaust so I'm fairly sure it's not the disk!).  Current:

Summary: 68.7 wakeups/second,  3.6 GPU ops/seconds, 0.0 VFS ops/sec and 0.8% CPU u

                Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
              4.6 ms/s      29.7        Process        /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox
            489.0 us/s       9.7        Process        xchat
            191.1 us/s       6.5        Process        [irq/46-iwlwifi]
            179.3 us/s       5.7        Timer          tick_sched_timer

The fan line comes and goes, sometimes at ~1900rpm, sometimes 900.

Comment 4 Jaroslav Škarvada 2013-11-28 11:44:50 UTC
Ok, thanks for the info.

The powertop tunables are temporal (till next boot), if you want to make them permanent, you can try to use the "tuned". In the default "balanced" profile the audi codecs are handled out of the box. For the other powertop tunings, there is included powertop2tuned utililty.

Regarding your problem, I think this can be kernel. Check your loads, by e.g. top / uptime, etc. If it is high, it is probably some "driver" problem. In such case, please create new bug against kernel.

There is nothing to fix in the powertop, thus closing this BZ.