[Nouveau] Powering down laptop GPU TU117GLM

[Karol Herbst]

On Sat, Jul 29, 2023 at 7:54 PM Ferenc Wágner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:
>
> Karol Herbst <kherbst at redhat.com> writes:
>
> > On Fri, Jun 23, 2023 at 12:12 AM Ferenc Wágner <wferi at niif.hu> wrote:
> >
> >> Ferenc Wágner <wferi at niif.hu> writes:
> >>
> >>> Sorry if I'm reaching the wrong forum, please advise if so.  My question
> >>> is not about the main focus of this community, but I had no better idea
> >>> about where to look for the relevant expertise.
> >>>
> >>> So: this Dell Precision 5560 laptop is built with a "T1200 Laptop GPU",
> >>> and I suspect it draws power even though I don't ever use it, heating
> >>> the computer and shortening battery life.  Is there a way to shut it
> >>> down for good?  (Or to make sure it isn't causing my problems?)
> >>
> >> Looks like I chose the wrong forum after all.  Shall I try the linux-pm
> >> list instead, or can you recommend a more approriate one for the above
> >> question?
> >
> > The GPU should be getting powered down automatically as long as
> > nouveau is loaded and nothing actively uses the GPU.
>
> Thanks for the tip, Karol!  Letting the nouveau module load doubled my
> estimated battery time.  Online PC10 residency is still low, but that
> must be a different issue.

yeah.. the Intel stuff from that time is a bit buggy and even plugging
in USB devices can disable PC10. You should probably try enabling
runtime power management on all pcie devices (write "auto" into all
/sys/bus/pci/devices/*/power/control files, each device also has a
"status" file to tell if they are suspended or not) And maybe same
with USB devices or something... There are also tools like tlp who
automate that stuff, but they usually set less optimal settings when
on power.

Anyway, enabling runtime power management usually helps a bit here.

> --
> Thanks again,
> Feri.
>