[power]四. Power State Coordination Interface电源管理通用接口

The Power State Coordination Interface (PSCI) provides an OS agnostic method for implementing power management use cases where cores can be powered up or down. This includes:

• Core idle management.
• Dynamic addition and removal of cores (hotplug), and secondary core boot.
• big.LITTLE migration.
• System shutdown and reset.

The messages sent using this interface are received by all relevant levels of execution. That is, if EL2 and EL3 are implemented, a message sent by a Rich OS executing in a guest must be received by a hypervisor. If the hypervisor sends it, the message must be received by the secure firmware that then coordinates with a Trusted OS. This allows each operating system to determine whether context saving is required.

For more information, see the Power State Coordination Interface (PSCI) specification.这部分文档以后看了在分享给同事和大家。

在ARM中，抽象出来了一个电源管理的通用接口，叫做PSCI，用来管里上面四种电源管理cases，不包括DVFS。

我们知道在ARM的多核系统中，存在不同的电源域（power domain）为系统的不同组件提供电源支撑。比如系统级别的电源状态的转换必然依赖于其他power domain进入相应的power level，system才能进入对应的power level，比如下面的示例：

1. 系统存在两个cluster，每个cluster存在两个CPU core
2. 每个CPU core存在三种省电状态
3. 只有所有的core进入standby（retention），cluster1/0才能进入retention state，system才能进入retention state
4. 只有所有的core进入power down state，cluster0/1才能进入power down state，system也才能进入power down
5. 每一高power domain进入的power level依赖于挂在其下面的subpower domain进入相应的power state

简单的示意图如下：

讲究的就是一种裁决方式。