1 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
2 .. include:: <isonum.txt>
4 =========================
5 System Suspend Code Flows
6 =========================
8 :Copyright: |copy| 2020 Intel Corporation
10 :Author: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
12 At least one global system-wide transition needs to be carried out for the
13 system to get from the working state into one of the supported
14 :doc:`sleep states <sleep-states>`. Hibernation requires more than one
15 transition to occur for this purpose, but the other sleep states, commonly
16 referred to as *system-wide suspend* (or simply *system suspend*) states, need
19 For those sleep states, the transition from the working state of the system into
20 the target sleep state is referred to as *system suspend* too (in the majority
21 of cases, whether this means a transition or a sleep state of the system should
22 be clear from the context) and the transition back from the sleep state into the
23 working state is referred to as *system resume*.
25 The kernel code flows associated with the suspend and resume transitions for
26 different sleep states of the system are quite similar, but there are some
27 significant differences between the :ref:`suspend-to-idle <s2idle>` code flows
28 and the code flows related to the :ref:`suspend-to-RAM <s2ram>` and
29 :ref:`standby <standby>` sleep states.
31 The :ref:`suspend-to-RAM <s2ram>` and :ref:`standby <standby>` sleep states
32 cannot be implemented without platform support and the difference between them
33 boils down to the platform-specific actions carried out by the suspend and
34 resume hooks that need to be provided by the platform driver to make them
35 available. Apart from that, the suspend and resume code flows for these sleep
36 states are mostly identical, so they both together will be referred to as
37 *platform-dependent suspend* states in what follows.
42 Suspend-to-idle Suspend Code Flow
43 =================================
45 The following steps are taken in order to transition the system from the working
46 state to the :ref:`suspend-to-idle <s2idle>` sleep state:
48 1. Invoking system-wide suspend notifiers.
50 Kernel subsystems can register callbacks to be invoked when the suspend
51 transition is about to occur and when the resume transition has finished.
53 That allows them to prepare for the change of the system state and to clean
54 up after getting back to the working state.
58 Tasks are frozen primarily in order to avoid unchecked hardware accesses
59 from user space through MMIO regions or I/O registers exposed directly to
60 it and to prevent user space from entering the kernel while the next step
61 of the transition is in progress (which might have been problematic for
64 All user space tasks are intercepted as though they were sent a signal and
65 put into uninterruptible sleep until the end of the subsequent system resume
68 The kernel threads that choose to be frozen during system suspend for
69 specific reasons are frozen subsequently, but they are not intercepted.
70 Instead, they are expected to periodically check whether or not they need
71 to be frozen and to put themselves into uninterruptible sleep if so. [Note,
72 however, that kernel threads can use locking and other concurrency controls
73 available in kernel space to synchronize themselves with system suspend and
74 resume, which can be much more precise than the freezing, so the latter is
75 not a recommended option for kernel threads.]
77 3. Suspending devices and reconfiguring IRQs.
79 Devices are suspended in four phases called *prepare*, *suspend*,
80 *late suspend* and *noirq suspend* (see :ref:`driverapi_pm_devices` for more
81 information on what exactly happens in each phase).
83 Every device is visited in each phase, but typically it is not physically
84 accessed in more than two of them.
86 The runtime PM API is disabled for every device during the *late* suspend
87 phase and high-level ("action") interrupt handlers are prevented from being
88 invoked before the *noirq* suspend phase.
90 Interrupts are still handled after that, but they are only acknowledged to
91 interrupt controllers without performing any device-specific actions that
92 would be triggered in the working state of the system (those actions are
93 deferred till the subsequent system resume transition as described
94 `below <s2idle_resume_>`_).
96 IRQs associated with system wakeup devices are "armed" so that the resume
97 transition of the system is started when one of them signals an event.
99 4. Freezing the scheduler tick and suspending timekeeping.
101 When all devices have been suspended, CPUs enter the idle loop and are put
102 into the deepest available idle state. While doing that, each of them
103 "freezes" its own scheduler tick so that the timer events associated with
104 the tick do not occur until the CPU is woken up by another interrupt source.
106 The last CPU to enter the idle state also stops the timekeeping which
107 (among other things) prevents high resolution timers from triggering going
108 forward until the first CPU that is woken up restarts the timekeeping.
109 That allows the CPUs to stay in the deep idle state relatively long in one
112 From this point on, the CPUs can only be woken up by non-timer hardware
113 interrupts. If that happens, they go back to the idle state unless the
114 interrupt that woke up one of them comes from an IRQ that has been armed for
115 system wakeup, in which case the system resume transition is started.
120 Suspend-to-idle Resume Code Flow
121 ================================
123 The following steps are taken in order to transition the system from the
124 :ref:`suspend-to-idle <s2idle>` sleep state into the working state:
126 1. Resuming timekeeping and unfreezing the scheduler tick.
128 When one of the CPUs is woken up (by a non-timer hardware interrupt), it
129 leaves the idle state entered in the last step of the preceding suspend
130 transition, restarts the timekeeping (unless it has been restarted already
131 by another CPU that woke up earlier) and the scheduler tick on that CPU is
134 If the interrupt that has woken up the CPU was armed for system wakeup,
135 the system resume transition begins.
137 2. Resuming devices and restoring the working-state configuration of IRQs.
139 Devices are resumed in four phases called *noirq resume*, *early resume*,
140 *resume* and *complete* (see :ref:`driverapi_pm_devices` for more
141 information on what exactly happens in each phase).
143 Every device is visited in each phase, but typically it is not physically
144 accessed in more than two of them.
146 The working-state configuration of IRQs is restored after the *noirq* resume
147 phase and the runtime PM API is re-enabled for every device whose driver
148 supports it during the *early* resume phase.
152 Tasks frozen in step 2 of the preceding `suspend <s2idle_suspend_>`_
153 transition are "thawed", which means that they are woken up from the
154 uninterruptible sleep that they went into at that time and user space tasks
155 are allowed to exit the kernel.
157 4. Invoking system-wide resume notifiers.
159 This is analogous to step 1 of the `suspend <s2idle_suspend_>`_ transition
160 and the same set of callbacks is invoked at this point, but a different
161 "notification type" parameter value is passed to them.
164 Platform-dependent Suspend Code Flow
165 ====================================
167 The following steps are taken in order to transition the system from the working
168 state to platform-dependent suspend state:
170 1. Invoking system-wide suspend notifiers.
172 This step is the same as step 1 of the suspend-to-idle suspend transition
173 described `above <s2idle_suspend_>`_.
177 This step is the same as step 2 of the suspend-to-idle suspend transition
178 described `above <s2idle_suspend_>`_.
180 3. Suspending devices and reconfiguring IRQs.
182 This step is analogous to step 3 of the suspend-to-idle suspend transition
183 described `above <s2idle_suspend_>`_, but the arming of IRQs for system
184 wakeup generally does not have any effect on the platform.
186 There are platforms that can go into a very deep low-power state internally
187 when all CPUs in them are in sufficiently deep idle states and all I/O
188 devices have been put into low-power states. On those platforms,
189 suspend-to-idle can reduce system power very effectively.
191 On the other platforms, however, low-level components (like interrupt
192 controllers) need to be turned off in a platform-specific way (implemented
193 in the hooks provided by the platform driver) to achieve comparable power
196 That usually prevents in-band hardware interrupts from waking up the system,
197 which must be done in a special platform-dependent way. Then, the
198 configuration of system wakeup sources usually starts when system wakeup
199 devices are suspended and is finalized by the platform suspend hooks later
202 4. Disabling non-boot CPUs.
204 On some platforms the suspend hooks mentioned above must run in a one-CPU
205 configuration of the system (in particular, the hardware cannot be accessed
206 by any code running in parallel with the platform suspend hooks that may,
207 and often do, trap into the platform firmware in order to finalize the
210 For this reason, the CPU offline/online (CPU hotplug) framework is used
211 to take all of the CPUs in the system, except for one (the boot CPU),
212 offline (typically, the CPUs that have been taken offline go into deep idle
215 This means that all tasks are migrated away from those CPUs and all IRQs are
216 rerouted to the only CPU that remains online.
218 5. Suspending core system components.
220 This prepares the core system components for (possibly) losing power going
221 forward and suspends the timekeeping.
223 6. Platform-specific power removal.
225 This is expected to remove power from all of the system components except
226 for the memory controller and RAM (in order to preserve the contents of the
227 latter) and some devices designated for system wakeup.
229 In many cases control is passed to the platform firmware which is expected
230 to finalize the suspend transition as needed.
233 Platform-dependent Resume Code Flow
234 ===================================
236 The following steps are taken in order to transition the system from a
237 platform-dependent suspend state into the working state:
239 1. Platform-specific system wakeup.
241 The platform is woken up by a signal from one of the designated system
242 wakeup devices (which need not be an in-band hardware interrupt) and
243 control is passed back to the kernel (the working configuration of the
244 platform may need to be restored by the platform firmware before the
245 kernel gets control again).
247 2. Resuming core system components.
249 The suspend-time configuration of the core system components is restored and
250 the timekeeping is resumed.
252 3. Re-enabling non-boot CPUs.
254 The CPUs disabled in step 4 of the preceding suspend transition are taken
255 back online and their suspend-time configuration is restored.
257 4. Resuming devices and restoring the working-state configuration of IRQs.
259 This step is the same as step 2 of the suspend-to-idle suspend transition
260 described `above <s2idle_resume_>`_.
264 This step is the same as step 3 of the suspend-to-idle suspend transition
265 described `above <s2idle_resume_>`_.
267 6. Invoking system-wide resume notifiers.
269 This step is the same as step 4 of the suspend-to-idle suspend transition
270 described `above <s2idle_resume_>`_.