Powertop 2 reporting very high wakeups/s (~500)

Question

Powertop is reporting very high wakepus/s.
Summary: 477.5 wakeups/second, 0.0 GPU ops/second and 0.0 VFS ops/sec
Usage Events/s Category Description
2.3 ms/s 112.7 Interrupt PS/2 Touchpad / Keyboard / Mouse
15.8 ms/s 47.9 Process /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
10.7 ms/s 44.9 Process /usr/lib/chromium/chromium --type=renderer --lang=en-US --force-fieldtest=CacheListSize/CacheListSize_14/ConnCount
6.1 ms/s 46.2 Process /usr/lib/chromium/chromium
591.4 µs/s 40.6 Timer tick_sched_timer
566.6 µs/s 40.0 Timer hrtimer_wakeup
3.6 ms/s 21.2 Process /usr/lib/chromium/chromium --type=renderer --lang=en-US --force-fieldtest=ConnCountImpact/conn_count_6/ConnnectBac
2.5 ms/s 21.4 Process mono /usr/lib/docky/Docky.exe
441.5 µs/s 20.1 Interrupt [41] i915@pci:0000:00:02.0
2.3 ms/s 17.7 Process compiz --replace --sm-disable --ignore-desktop-hints ccp --indirect-rendering
452.5 µs/s 12.4 Interrupt [6] tasklet(softirq)
4.7 ms/s 9.2 Process Terminal
582.2 µs/s 5.2 Process emerald --replace
60.0 µs/s 4.8 kWork ieee80211_iface_work
335.3 µs/s 3.6 Process xfce4-panel
307.7 µs/s 3.6 Process /usr/bin/python2 /usr/share/kupfer/kupfer.py --no-splash
287.6 µs/s 3.4 Process /usr/lib/notify-osd/notify-osd
6.0 µs/s 1.7 kWork intel_unpin_work_fn
219.2 µs/s 1.6 Process /usr/bin/nautilus file:///home/abhinandh/
208.4 µs/s 1.6 Process /usr/bin/mysqld --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --plugin-dir=/usr/lib/mysql/plugin --user=mysql --log-erro
52.1 µs/s 1.5 Process [ips-monitor]
62.4 µs/s 1.2 Process hald-addon-input: Listening on /dev/input/event9 /dev/input/event10 /dev/input/event2 /dev/input/event5 /dev/input
50.4 µs/s 1.2 Process [scsi_eh_1]
62.8 µs/s 1.1 Process /usr/sbin/acpid
73.9 µs/s 1.1 Interrupt [4] block(softirq)
43.0 µs/s 1.0 Process /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-afc-volume-monitor
4.4 µs/s 1.0 kWork console_callback
1.0 ms/s 0.5 kWork disk_events_workfn
71.7 µs/s 0.8 Process hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sr0 (every 2 sec)
1.4 ms/s 0.20 kWork acpi_os_execute_deferred
106.4 µs/s 0.7 Process /usr/sbin/NetworkManager
1.6 µs/s 0.7 kWork blk_delay_work
7.8 µs/s 0.5 kWork i915_gem_retire_work_handler
82.6 µs/s 0.5 Interrupt [43] SATA controller
266.0 µs/s 0.4 Interrupt [7] sched(softirq)
1.9 µs/s 0.5 kWork mei_wd_timer
What are tick_sched_timer, hrtimer_wakeup and why are they causing so many wakeups? Also is the touchpad supposed to cause so many wakeups? It sometimes goes to ~300.
1st gen core i5, laptop mode enabled.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Cdh wrote:I have read somewhere that these touchpads are so bad because they internally still use PS2 which uses interrupts to get its data into the system while i.e. macbooks (?) use touchpads that internally work via USB which does not cause so much wakeups...
My netbook touchpad uses PS2, doesn't cause so many wakeups. AFAIK, almost all synaptic and elantech touchpads use PS2. No idea about the macs though. I was wondering, isn't there a setting that can set the max no of interrupts caused per second or it is just infinite as it appears to be? I definitely don't need more than a 100 to move my cursor around!
This sucks, with some rapid finger scrolling I can make the wakeups count in powertop go crazy (I'm talking in the order of millions)