ARM Overview

This implementation of the ARM port of Variorum supports the Arm Juno r2 SoC. The Arm Juno r2 platform is a big.LITTLE cluster with Cortex-A72 (big) and Cortex-A53 (LITTLE) clusters (also called processors), respectively. It also has an Arm Mali GP-GPU. We have tested the ARM functionality of Variorum on Linaro supported Linux.

Requirements

This version of the ARM port of Variorum depends on the Linux Hardware Monitoring (hwmon) subsystem for access to the telemetry and control interfaces on the tested ARM platform. The standardized data interfaces provided by the hwmon framework enable a generic ARM implementation of Variorum.

Monitoring and Control Through Sysfs Interface

The built-in monitoring interface on the Arm Juno r2 board is implemented by the on-board FPGA. Since this interface is not universally available on most Arm implementations, we leverage the standard Linux sysfs interface for monitoring and control. The following subsections provide the specific metrics that are monitored on Arm Juno r2:

Power telemetry

The sysfs interface provides a file for each of the following Advanced Peripheral Bus (APB) energy meter registers:

  • SYS_POW_SYS : /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/power1_input

  • SYS_POW_A72 : /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/power2_input

  • SYS_POW_A53 : /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/power3_input

  • SYS_POW_GPU : /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/power4_input

Instantaneous power is recorded in bits 0-23 and reported in microwatts by the sysfs interface. To improve readability of the verbose output Variorum converts power into milliwatts before reporting. All registers are updated every 100 microseconds.

Memory power telemetry is not available on this platform.

Thermal telemetry

The sysfs interface provides a file for thermal telemetry for each system component through the GetSensorValue command in CSS System Control and Power Interface (SCPI).

  • SoC temperature: /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input

  • big temperature: /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp2_input

  • LITTLE temperature: /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp3_input

  • GPU temperature: /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp4_input

Instantaneous temperatures are reported in degree Celsius.

Clocks telemetry

Clocks are collected by the sysfs interface using the GetClockValue command in SCPI. A separate policy*/ subdirectory is provided for the big and LITTLE cluster.

  • big clocks: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_cur_freq

  • LITTLE clocks: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy1/scaling_cur_freq

Frequencies are reported by the sysfs interface in KHz. Variorum reports the clocks in MHz to keep it consistent with the clocks reported for other supported architectures.

Frequency control

The sysfs interface uses the SetClockValue SCPI command to set processor frequency for the following user-facing interfaces:

  • big clocks: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_setspeed

  • LITTLE clocks: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy1/scaling_setspeed

New frequency is specified in KHz to these interfaces. Variorum takes the new frequency as input in MHz and performs this conversion internally.

If you run into an error accessing the sysfs interface, this could be due to an the specified frequency value or the set governor. The sysfs interface only accepts valid values for frequencies as output by policy*/scaling_available_frequencies. Also, the specified frequency is only applied when the governor in policy*/scaling_governor is set to userspace.