Power Management Components

A device is power manageable if the power consumption of the device can be reduced when the device is idle. Conceptually, a power-manageable device consists of a number of power-manageable hardware units that are called components.

The device driver notifies the system about device components and their associated power levels. Accordingly, the driver creates a pm-components(9P) property in the driver's attach(9E) entry point as part of driver initialization.

Most devices that are power manageable implement only a single component. An example of a single-component, power-manageable device is a disk whose spindle motor can be stopped to save power when the disk is idle.

If a device has multiple power-manageable units that are separately controllable, the device should implement multiple components.

An example of a two-component, power-manageable device is a frame buffer card with a monitor. Frame buffer electronics is the first component [component 0]. The frame buffer's power consumption can be reduced when not in use. The monitor is the second component [component 1]. The monitor can also enter a lower power mode when the monitor is not in use. The frame buffer electronics and monitor are considered by the system as one device with two components.

Multiple Power Management Components

To the power management framework, all components are considered equal and completely independent of each other. If the component states are not completely compatible, the device driver must ensure that undesirable state combinations do not occur. For example, a frame buffer/monitor card has the following possible states: D0, D1, D2, and D3. The monitor attached to the card has the following potential states: On, Standby, Suspend, and Off. These states are not necessarily compatible with each other. For example, if the monitor is On, then the frame buffer must be at D0, that is, full on. If the frame buffer driver gets a request to power up the monitor to On while the frame buffer is at D3, the driver must call pm_raise_power(9F) to bring the frame buffer up before setting the monitor On. System requests to lower the power of the frame buffer while the monitor is On must be refused by the driver.