The Power Manager

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Just as Windows Plug and Play features require support from a system's hardware, its power- management capabilities require hardware that complies with the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification (available at http://www.teleport.com/~acpi/spec.htm). As a result of this requirement, the computer's BIOS (Basic Input Output System), the code that runs when the computer turns on, must also conform to the ACPI standard. Most x86 computers manufactured since the end of 1998 are ACPI compliant.

Note

Some computers, especially ones more than few years old, don't comply with the ACPI standard. Instead, they often conform to the older Advanced Power Management (APM) standard, which mandates fewer power-management capabilities than ACPI. Windows provides limited power management for APM systems, but we won't go into the details of that topic here. In this book, we focus on the behavior of Windows on ACPI computers.


The ACPI standard defines various power levels for a system and for devices. The six system power states are described in Table 9-3. They are referred to as S0 (fully on or working) through S5 (fully off). Each state has the following characteristics:

Table 9-3. System Power-State Definitions

State

Power Consumption

Software Resumption

Hardware Latency

S0 (fully on)

Maximum

Not applicable

None

S1 (sleeping)

Less than S0, more than S2

System resumes where it left off (returns to S0)

Less than 2 seconds

S2 (sleeping)

Less than S1, more than S3

System resumes where it left off (returns to S0)

2 or more seconds

S3 (sleeping)

Less than S2; processor is off

System resumes where it left off (returns to S0)

Same as S2

S4 (hibernating)

Trickle current to power button and wake circuitry

System restarts from saved hibernate file and resumes where it left off prior to hibernation (returns to S0)

Long and undefined

S5 (fully off)

Trickle current to power button

System boot

Long and undefined


  • Power consumption The amount of power the computer consumes

  • Software resumption The software state from which the computer resumes when moving to a "more on" state

  • Hardware latency The length of time it takes to return the computer to the fully on state

States S1 through S4 are sleeping states, in which the computer appears to be off because of reduced power consumption. However, the computer retains enough information, either in memory or on disk, to move to S0. For states S1 through S3, enough power is required to preserve the contents of the computer's memory so that when the transition is made to S0 (when the user or a device wakes up the computer), the power manager continues executing where it left off before the suspend. When the system moves to S4, the power manager saves the compressed contents of memory to a hibernation file named Hiberfil.sys, which is large enough to hold the uncompressed contents of memory, in the root directory of the system volume. (Compression is used to minimize disk I/O and to improve hibernation and resume- from-hibernation performance.) After it finishes saving memory, the power manager shuts off the computer. When a user subsequently turns on the computer, a normal boot process occurs, except that Ntldr checks for and detects a valid memory image stored in the hibernation file. If the hibernation file contains saved system state, Ntldr reads the contents of the file into memory, and then resumes execution at the point in memory that is recorded in the hibernation file.

The computer never directly transitions between states S1 and S4; instead, it must move to state S0 first. As illustrated in Figure 9-32, when the system is moving from any of states S1 through S5 to state S0, it's said to be waking, and when it's transitioning from state S0 to any of states S1 through S5, it's said to be sleeping.

Figure 9-32. System power-state transitions


Although the system can be in one of six power states, ACPI defines devices as being in one of four power states, D0 through D3. State D0 is fully on, and state D3 is fully off. The ACPI standard leaves it to individual drivers and devices to define the meanings of states D1 and D2, except that state D1 must consume an amount of power less than or equal to that consumed in state D0, and when the device is in state D2, it must consume power less than or equal to that consumed in D1. Microsoft, in conjunction with the major hardware OEMs, has defined a series of power management reference specifications (available on the Microsoft Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/resources/respec/specs/pmref) that specify the device power states that are required for all devices in a particular class (for the major device classes: display, network, SCSI, and so on). For some devices, there's no intermediate power state between fully on and fully off, which results in these states being undefined.

Power Manager Operation

Power management policy in Windows is split between the power manager and the individual device drivers. The power manager is the owner of the system power policy. This ownership means that the power manager decides which system power state is appropriate at any given point, and when a sleep, hibernation, or shutdown is required, the power manager instructs the power-capable devices in the system to perform appropriate system power-state transitions. The power manager decides when a system power-state transition is necessary by considering a number of factors:

  • System activity level

  • System battery level

  • Shutdown, hibernate, or sleep requests from applications

  • User actions, such as pressing the power button

  • Control Panel power settings

When the PnP manager performs device enumeration, part of the information it receives about a device is its power-management capabilities. A driver reports whether or not its devices support device states D1 and D2 and, optionally, the latencies, or times required, to move from states D1 through D3 to D0. To help the power manager determine when to make system power-state transitions, bus drivers also return a table that implements a mapping between each of the system power states (S0 through S5) and the device power states that a device supports. The table lists the lowest possible device power state for each system state and directly reflects the state of various power planes when the machine sleeps or hibernates. For example, a bus that supports all four device power states might return the mapping table shown in Table 9-4. Most device drivers turn their devices completely off (D3) when leaving S0 to minimize power consumption when the machine isn't in use. Some devices, however, such as network adapter cards, support the ability to wake up the system from a sleeping state. This ability, along with the lowest device power state in which the capability is present, is also reported during device enumeration.

Table 9-4. Example System-to-Device Power Mappings

System Power State

Device Power State

S0 (fully on)

D0 (fully on)

S1 (sleeping)

D2

S2 (sleeping)

D2

S3 (sleeping)

D2

S4 (hibernating)

D3 (fully off)

S5 (fully off)

D3 (fully off)


Driver Power Operation

When the power manager decides to make a transition between system power states, it sends power commands to a driver's power dispatch routine. More than one driver can be responsible for managing a device, but only one of the drivers is designated as the device power-policy owner. This driver determines, based on the system state, a device's power state. For example, if the system transitions between state S0 and S1, a driver might decide to move a device's power state from D0 to D1. Instead of directly informing the other drivers that share the management of the device of its decision, the device power-policy owner asks the power manager, via the PoRequestPowerIrp function, to tell the other drivers by issuing a device power command to their power dispatch routines. This behavior allows the power manager to control the number of power commands that are active on a system at any given time. For example, some devices in the system might require a significant amount of current to power up. The power manager ensures that such devices aren't powered up simultaneously.

EXPERIMENT: Viewing a Driver's Power Mappings

In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, you can see a driver's system power state to driver power state mappings with Device Manager. Open the Properties dialog box for a device, and choose the Power State Mappings entry in the drop-down list of the Details tab to see the mappings. (By default, Device Manager doesn't show the Details tab. See the experiment "Viewing Detailed Devnode Information in Device Manager" earlier in the chapter for instructions on enabling it.)

The mappings for this disk driver show that besides fully on (D0) and fully off (D3), it supports an intermediate state, D1, for S1. This likely represents the disk spin-down power state.




Many power commands have corresponding query commands. For example, when the system is moving to a sleep state, the power manager will first ask the devices on the system whether the transition is acceptable. A device that is busy performing time-critical operations or interacting with device hardware might reject the command, which results in the system maintaining its current system power-state setting.

EXPERIMENT: Viewing the System Power Capabilities and Policy

You can view a computer's system power capabilities by using the !pocaps kernel debugger command. Here's the output of the command when run on an ACPI-compliant laptop running Windows Professional:

kd>!pocaps PopCapabilities  @0x8046adc0   MiscSupportedFeatures:    PwrButton SlpButton Lid S1 S3 S4S5                             HiberFile FullWake   Processor  Features:      Thermal Throttle (MinThrottle = 03,  Scale = 08)   Disk Features:            SpinDown   Battery Features:         BatteriesPresent     Battery 0 - Capacity: 00000000  Granularity: 00000000     Battery 1 - Capacity: 00000000  Granularity: 00000000     Battery 2 - Capacity: 00000000  Granularity: 00000000   Wake Caps     Ac On Line Wake:        Sx     Soft LidWake:           Sx     RTC Wake:               S3     Min Device Wake:        Sx     Default Wake:           Sx

The Misc Supported Features line reports that, in addition to S0 (fully on), the system supports system power states S1, S3, S4, and S5 (it doesn't implement S2) and has a valid hibernation file to which it can save system memory when it hibernates (state S4).

The Power Options Properties dialog box, shown on the following page (available by selecting Power Options in Control Panel), lets you configure various aspects of the system's power policy. The exact properties you can configure depends on the system's power capabilities, which we just examined.

Windows Professional and Home systems on an ACPI-compliant laptop (such as the system on which we captured the following screen shot) generally provides the most power-management features. On such systems, you can set the idle detection timeouts that control when the system turns off the monitor, spins down hard disks, goes to standby mode (moves to system power state S1), and hibernates (moves the system to power state S4). In addition, the Advanced tab in Power Options lets you specify the power-related behavior of the system when you press the power or sleep buttons or close a laptop's lid.



The settings you configure in Power Options directly affect values in the system's power policy, which you can display with the !popolicy debugger command. Here's the output of the command on the same system:

kd>  !popolicy SYSTEM_POWER_POLICY(R.1)  @0x80469180     PowerButton:          Off    Flags: 00000003     Event:  00000000      Query UI     SleepButton:        Sleep    Flags: 00000003     Event:  00000000      Query UI     LidClose:       Hibernate    Flags: 00000001     Event:  00000000      Query     Idle:                None    Flags: 00000001     Event:  00000000      Query     OverThrottled:      Sleep    Flags: c0000004     Event:  00000000      Override                         NoWakes   Critical     IdleTimeout:     00000000    IdleSensitivity:          32     MinSleep:              S1    MaxSleep:                 S3     LidOpenWake:           S0    FastSleep:                S1     WinLogonFlags:   00000000    S4Timeout:          00000000     VideoTimeout:    00000000    VideoDim:                 6e     SpinTimeout:     00000708    OptForPower:              01     FanTolerance:          64    ForcedThrottle:           64     MinThrottle:           19

The first lines of the display correspond to the button behaviors specified on the Advanced tab of Power Options, and on this system the power button is interpreted as an off switch, the sleep button moves the system to a sleep state, and the closing of the laptop lid causes the system to hibernate.

The timeout values shown at the end of the output are expressed in seconds and displayed in hexadecimal notation. The values reported here directly correspond to the settings you can see configured in the Power Options screen shot. (The laptop is plugged in.) For example, the video timeout is 0, meaning the monitor never turns off, and the hard disk spin-down timeout is 0x708, which corresponds to 1800 seconds, or 30 minutes.


Driver Control of Device Power

Besides responding to power manager commands related to system power-state transitions, a driver can unilaterally control the device power state of its devices. In some cases, a driver might want to reduce the power consumption of a device it controls when the device is left inactive for a period of time. Examples include monitors that support a dimmed mode and disks that support spin-down. A driver can either detect an idle device itself or use facilities provided by the power manager. If the device uses the power manager, it registers the device with the power manager by calling the PoRegisterDeviceForIdleDetection function. This function informs the power manager of the timeout values to use to detect a device as idle and of the device power state that the power manager should apply when it detects the device as being idle. The driver specifies two timeouts: one to use when the user has configured the computer to conserve energy and the other to use when the user has configured the computer for optimum performance. After calling PoRegisterDeviceForIdleDetection, the driver must inform the power manager, by calling the PoSetDeviceBusy function, whenever the device is active.

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    Microsoft Windows Internals
    Microsoft Windows Internals (4th Edition): Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000
    ISBN: 0735619174
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2004
    Pages: 158

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