New Driver for electrical energy measurement

Jonathan Cameron Jonathan.Cameron at huawei.com
Fri Jul 14 08:07:33 UTC 2017


On Wed, 12 Jul 2017 15:19:40 +0200
Christian Gromm <christian.gromm at microchip.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Jul 2017 14:51:01 +0200
> Greg KH <gregkh at linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 02:18:54PM +0200, Christian Gromm wrote:  
> > > 
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > Microchip is planning to introduce a driver for a new companion
> > > chip series capable of electical energy measurement. However, we
> > > are not sure which location in the source tree is the most
> > > suitable. First thought was to put it into /drivers/powercap. But
> > > now we are in discussions whether it would make even more sense to
> > > introduce a new driver for electrical energy measuring or
> > > monitoring.  
> > 
> > Why not just have it be an IIO device, I think they have energy
> > sensors already (adding the iio mailing list to find out...)  
> 
> We thought about hwmon, but not IIO.
> 
> >   
> > > 
> > > Following is a rough overview of the part we want the driver for.
> > > Any input on this will be appreciated.
> > > 
> > > thanks,
> > > Chris
> > > 
> > > === Introduction
> > > 
> > > Following the recent focus on low-power systems, Microchip has
> > > designed a companion chip series capable of measuring the
> > > electrical energy flow of an electrical system.  The series in
> > > question, EM Chip  is capable of measuring the energy flow (in or
> > > out) of an electrical system by monitoring one or more power
> > > rails.  The 1st chip of the series, EM Chip is able to measure the
> > > net energy flow over 4 different power rails.  The chip itself is a
> > > small QFN16 (4mm x 4mm x 0.5mm) or WLCSP16 (2.25mm x 2.2mm) package.
> > > 
> > > === Theory of Operation
> > > 
> > > In order to measure the amount of energy entering/exiting a system,
> > > a small shunt resistor is interleaved on a power rail. By measuring
> > > the small voltage drop across the shunt resistor (a known value),
> > > the electrical current is measured.
> > > 
> > > 	I = U/R
> > > 
> > > Depending on whether the system is consuming or producing energy,
> > > the measured current value can be either a positive or negative
> > > number.
> > > 
> > > To get the instantaneous power figure we will have to measure the
> > > power rail’s voltage and multiply it with the measured value for
> > > the current
> > > 
> > > 	P = V * I = V * U_shunt/R
> > > 
> > > Knowing the instantaneous power and by making a high enough sample
> > > rate (for measuring the current and the power rail voltage), we can
> > > assume the measured value for power is equal to the average power
> > > figure for the amount of time between 2 sampling moments.
> > > 
> > > Now that we also know the average power for a given time interval
> > > (dt_x = time between 2 sampling moments; sampling speed is known),
> > > we can measure the energy amount entering or exiting the system
> > > between 2 sampling moments
> > > 
> > > 	E_partial_x = P * dt_x
> > > 
> > > Having the energy information available, we can continue to add the
> > > subsequent energy values for as long as the system is active. The
> > > amount of energy is the sum of all the partial energy values
> > > measured for each time interval E = Sum (E_partial_x), where x can
> > > take values from 0 till infinite.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > === Chip Operation
> > > 
> > > The EM Chip chip uses the same principles of operation as presented
> > > in the “Theory of Operation” and it does so for a number of 4
> > > channels. 4 independent power rails can be energy monitored in the
> > > same time.  The chip is controlled over I2C/SMBus by an I2C/SMBus
> > > master.
> > > 
> > > In order to reduce the amount of information traffic between the EM
> > > Chip and the entity asking for its information, the chip features
> > > large accumulator energy registers for the accumulated energy
> > > values. It can accumulate up to 2^24 power values. Depending on the
> > > selected chip’s sampling speed, such a number of samples are
> > > produced in about 4.5 hours (fastest sampling speed) up to 582.5
> > > hours or more than 24 days (lowest sampling speed).
> > > 
> > > EM Chip measures the power as a 28-bits number. The 28-bits number
> > > is the multiplication result of the 16-bits number used to measure
> > > the power rail voltage and the 12-bits number used for measuring
> > > the voltage drop across the power rail shunt resistor. 
> > > 
> > > If bidirectional energy flow is required, the power is measured as a
> > > 27-bits number and 1 bit for the sign. When no bidirectional flow is
> > > needed, the power value is measured as an unsigned 28-bits number.
> > > 
> > > Due to the relatively large size of the accumulated energy
> > > registers inside the chip (48 bits), in the worst case scenario
> > > (power values are full scale numbers), a number of 2^20 full-scale
> > > power values can be measured before energy register’s overflow.
> > > Using the fastest sampling speed, the accumulated energy registers
> > > overflows only after a bit over 17 minutes, while at the lowest
> > > sampling speed, it would overflow in over 36 hours.
> > > 
> > > Thus, the chip requires infrequent reads of the accumulated energy
> > > registers. Even in the worst case scenario, the time between 2
> > > consecutive energy accumulator reads can be over 17 minutes !
> > > 
> > > In order to keep a longer history of energy measurements, an
> > > I2C/SMBus master (e.g. SoC) would read the accumulated energy
> > > register values and then use larger “soft” accumulated energy
> > > registers to extend the maximum overflow period.
> > > 
> > > The EM Chip chip can monitor rails up to 32V. It can monitor the
> > > energy amounts used by various sub-components of a system (e.g.
> > > CPU, GPU, memory, hard-drives, USB ports, backlight, wireless
> > > adapters, cameras, displays, …)
> > > 
> > > EM Chip is able to start operating immediately after power-up with
> > > no CPU intervention at all. Such a feature is useful, because it
> > > can show the amount of energy consumed by a system before the
> > > latter finished booting its operating system.
> > > 
> > > The chip’s own current draw is around 20uA (in low-power mode,
> > > lowest sampling speed - 8 samples/sec) to 675uA (for the highest
> > > sampling speed - 1024 samples/sec)
> > > 
> > > When operated in low-power mode, it can be used to monitor the
> > > stand-by energy draw of the system. As an example, such a mode is
> > > useful when a system is suspended to RAM or to measure the energy
> > > usage from the power on till the booting process is finished.
> > > 
> > > === Linux Driver
> > > 
> > > While the chip is due to be publicly released in Q3 2017, a
> > > selected number of PC OEM manufacturers will include one or more EM
> > > Chip chips on their systems.  We would like to include a driver for
> > > EM Chip chip and its follow-up products, such that Linux Kernel
> > > will be able to provide the energy information as soon as computing
> > > systems using this series of chips will become available.
> > > 
> > > By providing accurate energy measurements, the computing systems
> > > along with their operating systems will be able to run more
> > > efficiently.  
> > 
> > 
> > Do you have any kernel code already to show how this will get hooked
> > up to the device?  Do you need device tree bindings for the sensors,
> > or are they on a discoverable bus?  
> 
> No, I don't. I wanted to bring this up on the mailing list first,
> before I get started.
> Sensors are attached via I2C.

Sure, I don't blame you having myself gone through several subsystems with
a driver in the past!

As Greg mentioned there are existing IIO drivers doing similar power
measurements.  So yes, a driver for such a part would be welcome.

I can see we may be 'straining' some of the interfaces a bit for those
48 bit values, but we can probably do something simple using the
two 32 bit values available from a raw read in IIO.

Going to get awkward the first time we get a 65+ bit device though.
There goes my assumptions again :(

Anyhow, nice sounding part so looking forward to seeing some code when
you are ready.

Note we do have additional energy drivers still in staging (dating back
to the early days of IIO) but those are 3 phase units so not so relevant
(and their interfaces need some work which is why they are still in
staging).

The adc/ina2xx_adc.c driver is probably a better place to start.

Hmm. The only thing that makes me doubt IIO as the obvious place is
that the focus is clearly on PC energy monitoring.  Now you can bridge
IIO to hwmon but I'd like a bit of input from Guenter on
whether that is a sensible approach here. 

By the sound of it the device will have much wider uses, but the
initial focus you state makes this slightly more interesting than
if we were guessing what it was for ;)

Jonathan
> 
> thanks,
> Chris
> 
> 
> 
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