I have been following the topic and seeing the direction wanted to point out that in my testing this is not a Linux issue.
BIOS 3.07
Both Fedora 35 (5.17.4-200, gnome 41.5) and Windows 10 21H2 show the same behaviour when moving the mouse. This is both with the touchpad and a USB optical mouse.
I have also had the chance to test a second input cover (rattling touchpad) and saw very similar interrupts to the original.
This is good to hear, so maybe Framework can take a look at this problem now. I had an interesting bug happen the other day, I had accidentally turned on caps-lock, and I went to turn it off and while pressing it and the A key accidentally, my right forearm clicked the touchpad. At that point the A key began infinite repeat, and both the touchpad and the keyboard were offline. I was forced to hold the power key down for about 30 seconds to reboot the machine to rectify this. I was not able to reproduce it later. Just something of note.
Just to throw this in this thread. the touchpad only generates 140interrupts/second when it is touched/moving.
…so we’re saying that the hardware is exposing the currently less-than-optimized state of the kernel driver?
I think I understand the issue now. The touchpad is generating 140 hardware interrupts/second. This is separate from i2c. The Linux kernel is then receiving those interrupts either over i2c/i8042. Due to how the drivers are written the kernel is causing more interrupts then it is receiving. ~14 interrupts per hardware interrupts for the i2c driver and ~3 per hardware interrupt for i8042. I misunderstood and thought we were supposed to be expecting 140 interrupts/sec on i2c.
Next steps would be to debug the i2c drivers and see why it is generating so many interrupts from each hardware interrupts? @Kieran_Levin
@Kieran_Levin Thanks for clarifying.
A more optimized Linux kernel driver may be able to fix this.
I see the same occurrence with similar power deltas under Windows 10 unless I’m mistaken this indicates this is not a Linux related issue but a fact of the hardware?
Edit: Testing more I saw slightly lower power usage from Windows.
Moving the cursor used up to 2.8W over idle on Windows, 3.1W on Fedora 35. Just touching the touchpad used 1.5W over idle on Windows while Fedora showed 2.2W.
It makes sense that touching it immediately spikes the power usage; even if the input itself doesn’t result in a program responding, the act of touching the touchpad sensor is enough to generate interrupts that wake the CPU up and make it process them (i.e. use power).
I think a more reasonable comparison would be dragging your finger around for a minute or so on each OS and comparing the power usage then.
Hey thanks for the feedback! I agree this seems to be from processing the interrupts rather than the touchpad itself.
One problem I had was to keep motion consistent between tests this is why I went for resting a finger on the touchpad and peak power draw from moving. I think you are right however measuring total consumption rather than rate would be better.
To clarify “just touching” is me resting a finger on the touchpad and the additional power draws mentioned above are constant rather than just spikes.
I did some further testing only in Windows to remove Linux variables.
When using the touchpad vs an optical USB mouse the touchpad is on average using 0.9 watts more doing the same task.
I considered doing a total consumption comparison but the duration needed to get some reasonable numbers would be longer than is physically comfortable.
Makes sense, since the proccessor needs to do more computer to get where ur moving your finger and all that.
Thanks that does make sense knowing that. So only a more efficient CPU will help. Seems I will be wanting that Ryzen upgrade ASAP!
Just an observation …
I disabled 3 cpu cores in the bios and noticed that as a result powertop now only shows roughly 25% of the wake up counts when using the touchpad.
Fedora 35, kernel 5.18.11, 1185G7
Hi, I’m Matt (the Linux Support Lead) and I wanted to see if I can replicate this. Now for the oddball questions that may not seem relevant.
Is this on a 11th or 12th gen Framework?
I’ve been experiencing this on a 11th gen Framework, and looking from the posts above they also seem to have 11th gen Framework laptops.
I was curious to see if this was an issue with 12th gen as well. On Arch running Linux 6.0.7-arch1-1, I get the following on my system between doing nothing and holding my finger on the touchpad measuring with turbostat:
# turbostat -c package -S --show IRQ,PkgWatt -i 1
IRQ PkgWatt
227 0.53
203 0.52
216 0.53
238 0.52
261 0.77
1979 1.44
2295 1.58
2686 1.67
2463 1.58
3634 1.82
3577 1.78
3239 1.71
2311 1.51
3559 1.79
3528 1.79
3576 1.81
3592 1.84
2348 1.60
3543 1.80
3232 1.70
2186 1.47
3595 1.79
3575 1.79
3632 1.81
2593 1.53
3521 1.80
3563 1.78
3789 1.80
2649 1.56
2616 1.61
3562 1.79
3157 1.69
2630 1.62
3567 1.77
3649 1.77
1727 1.03
237 0.63
223 0.52
225 0.53
245 0.56
And here’s the comparable dstat numbers for reference (turbostat gives accurate package power usage so more useful for looking at real world effect?)
# dstat -t --top-int
----system---- ---most-frequent----
time | interrupt
10-11 14:51:38|i915 7
10-11 14:51:39|i915 17
10-11 14:51:40|i915 14
10-11 14:51:41|i915 13
10-11 14:51:42|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 1107
10-11 14:51:43|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2898
10-11 14:51:44|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2858
10-11 14:51:45|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2646
10-11 14:51:46|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2926
10-11 14:51:47|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2870
10-11 14:51:48|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2715
10-11 14:51:49|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 1784
10-11 14:51:50|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 1881
10-11 14:51:51|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 1722
10-11 14:51:52|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 1493
10-11 14:51:53|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2913
10-11 14:51:54|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2897
10-11 14:51:55|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2629
10-11 14:51:56|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2777
10-11 14:51:57|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2817
10-11 14:51:58|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 1688
10-11 14:51:59|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 2458
10-11 14:52:00|idma64.2, i2c_designware.2 86
10-11 14:52:01|i915 13
10-11 14:52:02|nvme0q8 15
10-11 14:52:03|i915 13
So, maybe someone with a Ryzen 6000 laptop can chime, but with my curiousity piqued, I also decided to test with my old 4800H PF5NU1G (running the same 6.0.7-arch1-1 kernel):
# turbostat -c package -S --show IRQ,PkgWatt,C3% -i 1
IRQ C3% PkgWatt
791 99.53 2.68
815 99.56 2.66
698 99.57 2.69
738 99.54 2.68
3794 88.70 3.40
5542 83.45 3.79
5534 76.96 3.76
5542 79.23 3.85
5507 85.05 3.79
5569 85.37 3.77
5518 83.33 3.74
5425 83.98 3.73
5435 65.37 3.74
5534 80.22 3.77
5555 85.38 3.74
5463 78.40 3.74
1178 87.22 3.42
768 99.54 2.66
668 99.59 2.67
664 99.56 2.66
804 99.41 2.68
As you can see, this seems to have about the same impact (more IRQs and worse on C-state residency even) on a Ryzen 4000 laptop.
@lhl I did similar on my 11th gen and got this:
IRQ PkgWatt
649 0.90
613 0.92
2254 1.78
553 1.11
1939 1.59
604 0.91
627 0.98
604 0.94
579 0.92
548 0.98
593 0.99
570 0.94
592 0.93
643 1.06
590 0.98
497 0.97
555 0.86
616 0.98
355 0.84
606 1.02
563 0.94
605 1.01
608 0.89
627 0.92
572 0.90
539 0.92
579 0.94
510 0.88
576 0.95
579 0.93
1773 1.40
2510 1.93
491 0.79
1935 1.55
665 0.98
553 0.92
531 0.88
575 0.90
559 0.92
544 0.81
594 0.93
579 0.96
530 0.92
546 0.98
655 0.97
494 0.88
586 0.91
600 1.04
472 0.87
635 0.97
359 0.87
485 0.94
950 1.13
564 0.94
630 0.92
633 0.96
557 0.86
584 0.91
704 0.99
658 0.97
550 0.83
650 0.96
618 0.92
1018 1.05
640 0.97
490 0.91
386 0.86
646 1.02
578 0.90
587 0.95
630 0.95
566 0.95
563 0.90
658 1.02
658 1.04
565 0.91
572 0.94
665 0.96
574 0.94
544 1.62
345 0.83
645 0.98
733 1.05
This is on Fedora 37 (beta) with 6.0.7-*
I’ll need to spend some time with dstat Monday.
I noticed the increase in CPU pakage power is substantially different to the increase in total system draw however the psys power domain (which also adds the PCH and eDRAM consumption AFAIK) is much more reflective of the change. Perhaps this is more about the PCH than CPU package?
My results from i5 11th gen Fedora 36 kernel 6.07
Initially the system was drawing 3.0W resting a finger increased this to 4.5W with only a ~0.5W increase to the pkg power.
IRQ PkgWatt
548 0.49
511 0.62
463 0.61
479 0.49
552 0.67
573 0.58
459 0.48
515 0.62
422 0.53
565 0.57
800 0.73
2272 0.99
2184 0.97
2500 1.07
2362 1.05
2341 0.98
2618 1.14
2426 1.02
2262 1.00
2502 1.08
2392 0.99
2558 1.05
2436 1.05
Now “drawing” circles on the touchpad again idle at 3.0W rising to ~6.75W with 1.5W increase to pkg pwr.
IRQ PkgWatt
442 0.45
481 0.45
485 0.55
495 0.49
441 0.55
423 0.47
453 0.46
434 0.49
419 0.53
382 0.45
423 0.51
2226 1.03
5549 1.90
5816 2.02
5573 2.00
5412 2.01
5510 2.02
5330 2.00
4921 1.96
5487 2.05
4798 1.95
5449 1.98
5859 2.03
5625 2.05
5583 2.04
Not a framework laptop, but Googling led me here as I am having this issue in Arch on a Dell G5 with an i7-10750H cpu. Same symptoms as above, verified with turbostat. ~1.25w idle and ~2w just moving the mouse. ~1.5w just touching the touchpad…
Edit: Can confirm that I get better battery life and lower powertop system usage on both Fedora and NixOS compared to Arch on this specific laptop… So unfortunately I’ll have to use something other than Arch on this laptop for now 
in Arch ~13-15 idle - 16-20w browsing the web (even a live ISO)
in Fedora or NixOS ~7.5w idle and 10-13w browsing the web so the difference is significant.
Edit2: installed NixOS including nvidia drivers… crummy battery life persisted, and even though in Arch I had enabled udev rules to disable the nvidia card as per arch wiki, my nvidia card still wasn’t disabling. Turns out at least on NixOS I was able to get the dGPU suspend working using the nix config posted in How to use Nvidia PRIME offload to run the X server on the integrated board - #15 by Denommus - Help - NixOS Discourse
Did anybody create a diff of the TLP configuration?
I think i have part of the reason why this is happening. I looked at this using fedora 37, and it seems the gpio interrupt is pinned to one core, and the i2c interrupts are pinned to a separate core. This means every time the touchpad fires an interrupt, both a high performance and efficiency core cluster have to wake up to service the touchpad! And these are probably not even in the same cluster, so lots of cache evictions etc might be happening as both core clusters power on and off and caches are cleared and filled.
What core type are TP interrupts handled by?
The second idea was to investigate what core the interrupts are handled by:
First you can look at the Cores on the system to map them to E or P cores. The E cores will have lower frequencies when looked at using:
lscpu --all --extended
The second thing was to find out what cores the interrupts were handled by:
cat /proc/interrupts
watch -n 1 "cat /proc/interrupts | grep designware"
watch -n 1 "cat /proc/interrupts | grep PIXA"
CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3 CPU4 CPU5 CPU6 CPU7 CPU8 CPU9 CPU10 CPU11 CPU12 CPU13 CPU14 CPU15 CPU16 CPU17 CPU18 CPU19
43: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 43694516 0 0 0 0 IR-IO-APIC 43-fasteoi i2c_designware.2, idma64.2
135: 0 0 1711105 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 intel-gpio 3 PIXA3854:00
And move the touchpad, you will see which core the touchpad interrupts are increasing on both.
However the PIXA GPIO interrupt is pinned to a high performance core, but the i2c-designware interrupt is pinned to an efficiency core.
Lets pin them both to the same core CPU2:
# echo 00004 > /proc/irq/43/smp_affinity
# echo 00004 > /proc/irq/135/smp_affinity # DOESNT WORK, IO error?
Power consumption when using the touchpad seems to drop from about 7W to 5W! (Baseline is 4W)
I would like to pin the PIXA intel-gpio interrupt to an efficiency core, but I have not figured out how to do this.