Database Users

[Q] SetCPU governors (explained)

The SetCPU website explains some governors: http://www.pokedev.com/setcpu/#7
However it seems that some extra governors, not covered by the SetCPU site, have been added to some kernels; which I think should be documented so users know which one to pick.
I will add responses as to what each governor does to this post. If there are any governors not explained that you've come across, please post and we'll see if somebody can explain it.
Unexplained governors (somebody please tell me what they do)
smartass (Best explanation i've found paraphrases to: based on interactive, but better.)
----
ondemand
Available in most kernels, and the default governor in most kernels. When the CPU load reaches a certain point (see "up threshold" in Advanced Settings), ondemand will rapidly scale the CPU up to meet demand, then gradually scale the CPU down when it isn't needed. - SetCPU website
conservative
Available in some kernels. It is similar to the ondemand governor, but will scale the CPU up more gradually to better fit demand. Conservative provides a less responsive experience than ondemand, but can save battery. - SetCPU website
performance
Available in most kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "max" set value at all times. This is a bit more efficient than simply setting "max" and "min" to the same value and using ondemand because the system will not waste resources scanning for the CPU load. This governor is recommended for stable benchmarking. - SetCPU website
powersave
Available in some kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "min" set value at all times. - SetCPU website
userspace
A method for controlling the CPU speed that isn't currently used by SetCPU. For best results, do not use the userspace governor. - SetCPU website
Interactive
The 'interactive' governor has a different approach. Instead of sampling the cpu
at a specified rate, the governor will scale the cpu frequency up when coming
out of idle. When the cpu comes out of idle, a timer is configured to fire
within 1-2 ticks. If the cpu is 100% busy from exiting idle to when the timer
fires then we assume the cpu is underpowered and ramp to MAX speed.
If the cpu was not 100% busy, then the governor evaluates the cpu load over the
last 'min_sample_rate' (default 50000 uS) to determine the cpu speed to ramp down
to. - [Patches] For developers, interactive governor patch for leo kernel
Thanks,
RJackson

As explained by MDJ:
SMARTASS GOVERNOR - is based on the concept of the interactive governor.
I have always agreed that in theory the way interactive works - by taking over the idle loop - is very attractive. I have never managed to tweak it so it would behave decently in real life. Smartass is a complete rewrite of the code plus more. I think its a success. Performance is on par with the "old" minmax and I think smartass is a bit more responsive. Battery life is hard to quantify precisely but it does spend much more time at the lower frequencies.
Smartass will also cap the max frequency when sleeping to 245Mhz (or if your min frequency is higher than 245 - why?! - it will cap it to your min frequency). Lets take for example the 998/245 kernel, it will sleep at 245. No need for sleep profiles any more!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

FerretAD said:
As explained by MDJ:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw that one but didn't use it because it didn't really explain what it does.
RJackson said:
smartass (Best explanation i've found paraphrases to: based on interactive, but better.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Which Kernel support SmartAss? I use WildMonks with SetCPU 2.1.0 and I don't see the "smartass" governor in my list.

SalsaForte said:
Which Kernel support SmartAss? I use WildMonks with SetCPU 2.1.0 and I don't see the "smartass" governor in my list.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have the "savage" kernal with smartass

LeeDroid's Kernals and ROMs support smartass as well

Leong428 said:
LeeDroid's Kernals and ROMs support smartass as well
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Add Tiamat to the list.

add chad's incredikernel

SalsaForte said:
Which Kernel support SmartAss? I use WildMonks with SetCPU 2.1.0 and I don't see the "smartass" governor in my list.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On my evo shift the x99 kernel supports smartass for stockish froyo roms and cm7 roms
you have to have a kernel to add smartass to your list

RJackson said:
The SetCPU website explains some governors: http://www.pokedev.com/setcpu/#7
However it seems that some extra governors, not covered by the SetCPU site, have been added to some kernels; which I think should be documented so users know which one to pick.
I will add responses as to what each governor does to this post. If there are any governors not explained that you've come across, please post and we'll see if somebody can explain it.
Unexplained governors (somebody please tell me what they do)
smartass (Best explanation i've found paraphrases to: based on interactive, but better.)
----
ondemand
Available in most kernels, and the default governor in most kernels. When the CPU load reaches a certain point (see "up threshold" in Advanced Settings), ondemand will rapidly scale the CPU up to meet demand, then gradually scale the CPU down when it isn't needed. - SetCPU website
conservative
Available in some kernels. It is similar to the ondemand governor, but will scale the CPU up more gradually to better fit demand. Conservative provides a less responsive experience than ondemand, but can save battery. - SetCPU website
performance
Available in most kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "max" set value at all times. This is a bit more efficient than simply setting "max" and "min" to the same value and using ondemand because the system will not waste resources scanning for the CPU load. This governor is recommended for stable benchmarking. - SetCPU website
powersave
Available in some kernels. It will keep the CPU running at the "min" set value at all times. - SetCPU website
userspace
A method for controlling the CPU speed that isn't currently used by SetCPU. For best results, do not use the userspace governor. - SetCPU website
Interactive
The 'interactive' governor has a different approach. Instead of sampling the cpu
at a specified rate, the governor will scale the cpu frequency up when coming
out of idle. When the cpu comes out of idle, a timer is configured to fire
within 1-2 ticks. If the cpu is 100% busy from exiting idle to when the timer
fires then we assume the cpu is underpowered and ramp to MAX speed.
If the cpu was not 100% busy, then the governor evaluates the cpu load over the
last 'min_sample_rate' (default 50000 uS) to determine the cpu speed to ramp down
to. - [Patches] For developers, interactive governor patch for leo kernel
Thanks,
RJackson
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the kind descriptions...
I've translated them to Korean for my fellow countrymen!
>,<
http://caleb1783.tistory.com/157

Thanks for this. Smartass has been a mystery to me.

When I installed SETCPU I selected auto-detect, now on my device (not a HD2, but this seemed like a good place to ask as it is directly related) now I have no way to select the governor at all (box is blank), how to I change the detection from automatic to a device type "Tegra 2" in my case, I see no option to allow me to do this?
Thanks,
ERIC

Powersave
I read on this forum that Power save SetCPU governor saves the best battery. I Hope this is true?
I am trying to get my hands on powersave
I can't find powersave in the "market" though.. What's up with that? Can anyone tell me which one it is? Maybe give the name of the developer so i can find it back easier?
thnks in advance
Im using galaxy s 2 with lite'ning rom 6.1 ninphetamine 2.0.5

ssienn said:
I read on this forum that Power save SetCPU governor saves the best battery. I Hope this is true?
I am trying to get my hands on powersave
I can't find powersave in the "market" though.. What's up with that? Can anyone tell me which one it is? Maybe give the name of the developer so i can find it back easier?
thnks in advance
Im using galaxy s 2 with lite'ning rom 6.1 ninphetamine 2.0.5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's not how it works. Governors are a part of the kernel. If you want features in your kernel that you don't have, you must flash a new kernel.
also, perhaps you should reread what 'powersave' is. It will keep your phone at the lowest cpu speed constantly. This will save battery, sure, but it will also completely destroy your phone's performance. Might as well go back to your old Moto Razr.

thx, actually, i set those gov randomly before i read this post

Ondemand vs. Smartass vs. Performance gov. - Test
The idea was, that maybe the display eats so much power,
that if it is on, the CPU setting does not make a big different.
Bottom line: it does.
Phone: HTC Sensation, Leedroid Sensational 3.1 (kernel 3.2)
Conditions: Simulating light cpu use like writing email:
Brightness 50% (no timeout), MP3 playing (Volume=1, headphone), a new document on the screen,
Wifi and 3G network off (these have fluctuation, so it is easier to compare if these are off)
Ondemand 192/1188 governor: 5 h 10 min
Performance governor: 4 h 20 min
SmartassV2 192/1188 governor: 5 h 2 min
Off course if the display is off, it is easy to choose, because there is no need for performance.
I set up Conservative 192/810, but any similar can work.
I choose Ondemand, and using "Tasker" to switch to Performance, if certain applications are active,
like Doodle Jump - which run a little smoother with the Performance, for as an example.

thanks for the info...

nice, thanks

Thanks, cleared my doubts.

completely noob question, how do u choose between governors? set cpu from the market its a paid app, and the one i downloades from the official post wont work
i have a galaxy s2 with Touch X-POWER+ 2.1 [XXKI3] rom

CPU Governors explained

Thanks to deedii for posting this in another forum:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...65&postcount=2
Android CPU governors explained
1: OnDemand
2: OndemandX
3: Performance
4: Powersave
5: Conservative
6: Userspace
7: Min Max
8: Interactive
9: InteractiveX
10: Smartass
11: SmartassV2
12: Scary
13: Lagfree
14: Smoothass
15: Brazilianwax
16: SavagedZen
17: Lazy
18: Lionheart
19: LionheartX
20: Intellidemand
21: Hotplug
22: BadAss
23: Wheatley
24:Lulzactive
25: Pegasusq/Pegasusd
26: hotplugx
27: AbissPlug
28: MSM DCVS
1: OnDemand Governor:
This governor has a hair trigger for boosting clockspeed to the maximum speed set by the user. If the CPU load placed by the user abates, the OnDemand governor will slowly step back down through the kernel's frequency steppings until it settles at the lowest possible frequency, or the user executes another task to demand a ramp.
OnDemand has excellent interface fluidity because of its high-frequency bias, but it can also have a relatively negative effect on battery life versus other governors. OnDemand is commonly chosen by smartphone manufacturers because it is well-tested, reliable, and virtually guarantees the smoothest possible performance for the phone. This is so because users are vastly more likely to ***** about performance than they are the few hours of extra battery life another governor could have granted them.
This final fact is important to know before you read about the Interactive governor: OnDemand scales its clockspeed in a work queue context. In other words, once the task that triggered the clockspeed ramp is finished, OnDemand will attempt to move the clockspeed back to minimum. If the user executes another task that triggers OnDemand's ramp, the clockspeed will bounce from minimum to maximum. This can happen especially frequently if the user is multi-tasking. This, too, has negative implications for battery life.
2: OndemandX:
Basically an ondemand with suspend/wake profiles. This governor is supposed to be a battery friendly ondemand. When screen is off, max frequency is capped at 500 mhz. Even though ondemand is the default governor in many kernel and is considered safe/stable, the support for ondemand/ondemandX depends on CPU capability to do fast frequency switching which are very low latency frequency transitions. I have read somewhere that the performance of ondemand/ondemandx were significantly varying for different i/o schedulers. This is not true for most of the other governors. I personally feel ondemand/ondemandx goes best with SIO I/O scheduler.
3: Performance Governor:
This locks the phone's CPU at maximum frequency. While this may sound like an ugly idea, there is growing evidence to suggest that running a phone at its maximum frequency at all times will allow a faster race-to-idle. Race-to-idle is the process by which a phone completes a given task, such as syncing email, and returns the CPU to the extremely efficient low-power state. This still requires extensive testing, and a kernel that properly implements a given CPU's C-states (low power states).
4: Powersave Governor:
The opposite of the Performance governor, the Powersave governor locks the CPU frequency at the lowest frequency set by the user.
5:Conservative Governor:
This biases the phone to prefer the lowest possible clockspeed as often as possible. In other words, a larger and more persistent load must be placed on the CPU before the conservative governor will be prompted to raise the CPU clockspeed. Depending on how the developer has implemented this governor, and the minimum clockspeed chosen by the user, the conservative governor can introduce choppy performance. On the other hand, it can be good for battery life.
The Conservative Governor is also frequently described as a "slow OnDemand," if that helps to give you a more complete picture of its functionality.
6: Userspace Governor:
This governor, exceptionally rare for the world of mobile devices, allows any program executed by the user to set the CPU's operating frequency. This governor is more common amongst servers or desktop PCs where an application (like a power profile app) needs privileges to set the CPU clockspeed.
7: Min Max
well this governor makes use of only min & maximum frequency based on workload... no intermediate frequencies are used.
8: Interactive Governor:
Much like the OnDemand governor, the Interactive governor dynamically scales CPU clockspeed in response to the workload placed on the CPU by the user. This is where the similarities end. Interactive is significantly more responsive than OnDemand, because it's faster at scaling to maximum frequency.
Unlike OnDemand, which you'll recall scales clockspeed in the context of a work queue, Interactive scales the clockspeed over the course of a timer set arbitrarily by the kernel developer. In other words, if an application demands a ramp to maximum clockspeed (by placing 100% load on the CPU), a user can execute another task before the governor starts reducing CPU frequency. This can eliminate the frequency bouncing discussed in the OnDemand section. Because of this timer, Interactive is also better prepared to utilize intermediate clockspeeds that fall between the minimum and maximum CPU frequencies. This is another pro-battery life benefit of Interactive.
However, because Interactive is permitted to spend more time at maximum frequency than OnDemand (for device performance reasons), the battery-saving benefits discussed above are effectively negated. Long story short, Interactive offers better performance than OnDemand (some say the best performance of any governor) and negligibly different battery life.
Interactive also makes the assumption that a user turning the screen on will shortly be followed by the user interacting with some application on their device. Because of this, screen on triggers a ramp to maximum clockspeed, followed by the timer behavior described above.
9: InteractiveX Governor:
Created by kernel developer "Imoseyon," the InteractiveX governor is based heavily on the Interactive governor, enhanced with tuned timer parameters to better balance battery vs. performance. The InteractiveX governor's defining feature, however, is that it locks the CPU frequency to the user's lowest defined speed when the screen is off.
10: Smartass
Is based on the concept of the interactive governor.
I have always agreed that in theory the way interactive works – by taking over the idle loop – is very attractive. I have never managed to tweak it so it would behave decently in real life. Smartass is a complete rewrite of the code plus more. I think its a success. Performance is on par with the “old” minmax and I think smartass is a bit more responsive. Battery life is hard to quantify precisely but it does spend much more time at the lower frequencies.
Smartass will also cap the max frequency when sleeping to 352Mhz (or if your min frequency is higher than 352 – why?! – it will cap it to your min frequency). Lets take for example the 528/176 kernel, it will sleep at 352/176. No need for sleep profiles any more!"
11: SmartassV2:
Version 2 of the original smartass governor from Erasmux. Another favorite for many a people. The governor aim for an "ideal frequency", and ramp up more aggressively towards this freq and less aggressive after. It uses different ideal frequencies for screen on and screen off, namely awake_ideal_freq and sleep_ideal_freq. This governor scales down CPU very fast (to hit sleep_ideal_freq soon) while screen is off and scales up rapidly to awake_ideal_freq (500 mhz for GS2 by default) when screen is on. There's no upper limit for frequency while screen is off (unlike Smartass). So the entire frequency range is available for the governor to use during screen-on and screen-off state. The motto of this governor is a balance between performance and battery.
12: Scary
A new governor wrote based on conservative with some smartass features, it scales accordingly to conservatives laws. So it will start from the bottom, take a load sample, if it's above the upthreshold, ramp up only one speed at a time, and ramp down one at a time. It will automatically cap the off screen speeds to 245Mhz, and if your min freq is higher than 245mhz, it will reset the min to 120mhz while screen is off and restore it upon screen awakening, and still scale accordingly to conservatives laws. So it spends most of its time at lower frequencies. The goal of this is to get the best battery life with decent performance. It will give the same performance as conservative right now, it will get tweaked over time.
13: Lagfree:
Lagfree is similar to ondemand. Main difference is it's optimization to become more battery friendly. Frequency is gracefully decreased and increased, unlike ondemand which jumps to 100% too often. Lagfree does not skip any frequency step while scaling up or down. Remember that if there's a requirement for sudden burst of power, lagfree can not satisfy that since it has to raise cpu through each higher frequency step from current. Some users report that video playback using lagfree stutters a little.
14: Smoothass:
The same as the Smartass “governor” But MUCH more aggressive & across the board this one has a better battery life that is about a third better than stock KERNEL
15: Brazilianwax:
Similar to smartassV2. More aggressive ramping, so more performance, less battery
16: SavagedZen:
Another smartassV2 based governor. Achieves good balance between performance & battery as compared to brazilianwax.
17: Lazy:
This governor from Ezekeel is basically an ondemand with an additional parameter min_time_state to specify the minimum time CPU stays on a frequency before scaling up/down. The Idea here is to eliminate any instabilities caused by fast frequency switching by ondemand. Lazy governor polls more often than ondemand, but changes frequency only after completing min_time_state on a step overriding sampling interval. Lazy also has a screenoff_maxfreq parameter which when enabled will cause the governor to always select the maximum frequency while the screen is off.
18: Lionheart:
Lionheart is a conservative-based governor which is based on samsung's update3 source.
The tunables (such as the thresholds and sampling rate) were changed so the governor behaves more like the performance one, at the cost of battery as the scaling is very aggressive.
19: LionheartX
LionheartX is based on Lionheart but has a few changes on the tunables and features a suspend profile based on Smartass governor.
20: Intellidemand:
Intellidemand aka Intelligent Ondemand from Faux is yet another governor that's based on ondemand. Unlike what some users believe, this governor is not the replacement for OC Daemon (Having different governors for sleep and awake). The original intellidemand behaves differently according to GPU usage. When GPU is really busy (gaming, maps, benchmarking, etc) intellidemand behaves like ondemand. When GPU is 'idling' (or moderately busy), intellidemand limits max frequency to a step depending on frequencies available in your device/kernel for saving battery. This is called browsing mode. We can see some 'traces' of interactive governor here. Frequency scale-up decision is made based on idling time of CPU. Lower idling time (<20%) causes CPU to scale-up from current frequency. Frequency scale-down happens at steps=5% of max frequency. (This parameter is tunable only in conservative, among the popular governors)
To sum up, this is an intelligent ondemand that enters browsing mode to limit max frequency when GPU is idling, and (exits browsing mode) behaves like ondemand when GPU is busy; to deliver performance for gaming and such. Intellidemand does not jump to highest frequency when screen is off.
21: Hotplug Governor:
The Hotplug governor performs very similarly to the OnDemand governor, with the added benefit of being more precise about how it steps down through the kernel's frequency table as the governor measures the user's CPU load. However, the Hotplug governor's defining feature is its ability to turn unused CPU cores off during periods of low CPU utilization. This is known as "hotplugging."
22: BadAss Goveronor:
Badass removes all of this "fast peaking" to the max frequency. On a typical system the cpu won't go above 918Mhz and therefore stay cool and will use less power. To trigger a frequency increase, the system must run a bit @ 918Mhz with high load, then the frequency is bumped to 1188Mhz. If that is still not enough the governor gives you full throttle. (this transition should not take longer than 1-2 seconds, depending on the load your system is experiencing)
Badass will also take the gpu load into consideration. If the gpu is moderately busy it will bypass the above check and clock the cpu with 1188Mhz. If the gpu is crushed under load, badass will lift the restrictions to the cpu.
23: Wheatley:
Building on the classic 'ondemand' governor is implemented Wheatley governor. The governor has two additional parameters:
target_residency - The minimum average residency in µs which is considered acceptable for a proper efficient usage of the C4 state. Default is 10000 = 10ms.
allowed_misses - The number sampling intervals in a row the average residency is allowed to be lower than target_residency before the governor reduces the frequency. This ensures that the governor is not too aggressive in scaling down the frequency and reduces it just because some background process was temporarily causing a larger number of wakeups. The default is 5.
Wheatley works as planned and does not hinder the proper C4 usage for task where the C4 can be used properly .
For internet browsing the time spend in C4 has increased by 10% points and the average residency has increased by about 1ms. I guess these differences are mostly due to the different browsing behaviour (I spend the last time more multi-tabbing). But at least we can say that Wheatley does not interfere with the proper use of the C4 state during 'light' tasks. For music playback with screen off the time spend in C4 is practically unchanged, however the average residency is reduced from around 30ms to around 18ms, but this is still more than acceptable.
So the results show that Wheatley works as intended and ensures that the C4 state is used whenever the task allows a proper efficient usage of the C4 state. For more demanding tasks which cause a large number of wakeups and prevent the efficient usage of the C4 state, the governor resorts to the next best power saving mechanism and scales down the frequency. So with the new highly-flexible Wheatley governor one can have the best of both worlds.
Obviously, this governor is only available on multi-core devices.
24: Lulzactive:
Lulzactive:
This new find from Tegrak is based on Interactive & Smartass governors and is one of the favorites.
Old Version: When workload is greater than or equal to 60%, the governor scales up CPU to next higher step. When workload is less than 60%, governor scales down CPU to next lower step. When screen is off, frequency is locked to global scaling minimum frequency.
New Version: Three more user configurable parameters: inc_cpu_load, pump_up_step, pump_down_step. Unlike older version, this one gives more control for the user. We can set the threshold at which governor decides to scale up/down. We can also set number of frequency steps to be skipped while polling up and down.
When workload greater than or equal to inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU pump_up_step steps up. When workload is less than inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU down pump_down_step steps down.
Example:
Consider
inc_cpu_load=70
pump_up_step=2
pump_down_step=1
If current frequency=200, Every up_sampling_time Us if cpu load >= 70%, cpu is scaled up 2 steps - to 800.
If current frequency =1200, Every down_sampling_time Us if cpu load < 70%, cpu is scaled down 1 step - to 1000.
25: Pegasusq/Pegasusd
The Pegasus-q / d is a multi-core based on the Ondemand governor and governor with integrated hot-plugging.
Ongoing processes in the queue, we know that multiple processes can run simultaneously on. These processes are active in an array, which is a field called "Run Queue" queue that is ongoing, with their priority values ​​arranged (priority will be used by the task scheduler, which then decides which process to run next).
To ensure that each process has its fair share of resources, each running for a certain period and will eventually stop and then again placed in the queue until it is your turn again. If a program is terminated, so that others can run the program with the highest priority in the current queue is executed.
26: Hotplugx
It 'a Hotplug modified and optimized for the suspension in off-screen
27: AbissPlug
It 'a Governor derived hotplug, it works the same way, but with the changes in savings for a better battery.
28: MSM DCVS
a very efficient and wide range of Dynamic Clock and
Voltage Scaling (DCVS) which addresses usage models from
active standby to mid and high level processing requirements.
A Krait CPU can smoothly scale from low power, low
leakage mode to blazingly fast performance.
Believe it's a governor that is mfg'd by qualcomm to utilize new on chip features.
MSM is the prefix for the SOC (MSM8960) and DCVS is Dynamic Clock and Voltage Scaling. Makes sense, MSM-DCVS
Credits goes to:
http://icrontic.com/discussion/95140...m-tuner-tegrak
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1369817

This is really interesting , so is smartass better than v2 for battery as we know from tests that with deep idle 400mhz is best...
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2

italia0101 said:
This is really interesting , so is smartass better than v2 for battery as we know from tests that with deep idle 400mhz is best...
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for my part in the various tests I've done for me, smartass v2 works better

Did you keep defaults of v2?
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2

italia0101 said:
Did you keep defaults of v2?
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is also factory defaults no problem

as governor frequently used and why?
so we try to give references to new users

stempox said:
as governor frequently used and why?
so we try to give references to new users
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
changes coming

added badass

Enlightening, I wasn't even aware there were so many governors.

next governor added pegasus

stempox said:
next governor added pegasus
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for new user like me very useful

blonde90 said:
Thanks for new user like me very useful
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks, always available

new governors coming

Wheatley added

I am astonished how many governors are available.

Very clear and easy to understand.
This has enabled me to choose which governor to use based on habits.

Thanks for this. Added to subscribe for future reference!
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2

thread updated

Great thread. It explained some of what I didn't know about the various governors and even showed me some new ones.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2

This really helped me out! Great thread! Thank you.
Sent from my Nexus S using xda app-developers app

Cpu governors explained.

Android CPU governors explained
1: OnDemand
2: OndemandX
3: Performance
4: Powersave
5: Conservative
6: Userspace
7: Min Max
8: Interactive
9: InteractiveX
10: Smartass
11: SmartassV2
12: Scary
13: Lagfree
14: Smoothass
15: Brazilianwax
16: SavagedZen
17: Lazy
18: Lionheart
19: LionheartX
20: Intellidemand
21: Hotplug
22: BadAss
23: Wheatley
24:Lulzactive
25: Pegasusq/Pegasusd
26: hotplugx
27: AbissPlug
28: MSM DCVS
1: OnDemand Governor:
This governor has a hair trigger for boosting clockspeed to the maximum speed set by the user. If the CPU load placed by the user abates, the OnDemand governor will slowly step back down through the kernel's frequency steppings until it settles at the lowest possible frequency, or the user executes another task to demand a ramp.
OnDemand has excellent interface fluidity because of its high-frequency bias, but it can also have a relatively negative effect on battery life versus other governors. OnDemand is commonly chosen by smartphone manufacturers because it is well-tested, reliable, and virtually guarantees the smoothest possible performance for the phone. This is so because users are vastly more likely to ***** about performance than they are the few hours of extra battery life another governor could have granted them.
This final fact is important to know before you read about the Interactive governor: OnDemand scales its clockspeed in a work queue context. In other words, once the task that triggered the clockspeed ramp is finished, OnDemand will attempt to move the clockspeed back to minimum. If the user executes another task that triggers OnDemand's ramp, the clockspeed will bounce from minimum to maximum. This can happen especially frequently if the user is multi-tasking. This, too, has negative implications for battery life.
2: OndemandX:
Basically an ondemand with suspend/wake profiles. This governor is supposed to be a battery friendly ondemand. When screen is off, max frequency is capped at 500 mhz. Even though ondemand is the default governor in many kernel and is considered safe/stable, the support for ondemand/ondemandX depends on CPU capability to do fast frequency switching which are very low latency frequency transitions. I have read somewhere that the performance of ondemand/ondemandx were significantly varying for different i/o schedulers. This is not true for most of the other governors. I personally feel ondemand/ondemandx goes best with SIO I/O scheduler.
3: Performance Governor:
This locks the phone's CPU at maximum frequency. While this may sound like an ugly idea, there is growing evidence to suggest that running a phone at its maximum frequency at all times will allow a faster race-to-idle. Race-to-idle is the process by which a phone completes a given task, such as syncing email, and returns the CPU to the extremely efficient low-power state. This still requires extensive testing, and a kernel that properly implements a given CPU's C-states (low power states).
4: Powersave Governor:
The opposite of the Performance governor, the Powersave governor locks the CPU frequency at the lowest frequency set by the user.
5:Conservative Governor:
This biases the phone to prefer the lowest possible clockspeed as often as possible. In other words, a larger and more persistent load must be placed on the CPU before the conservative governor will be prompted to raise the CPU clockspeed. Depending on how the developer has implemented this governor, and the minimum clockspeed chosen by the user, the conservative governor can introduce choppy performance. On the other hand, it can be good for battery life.
The Conservative Governor is also frequently described as a "slow OnDemand," if that helps to give you a more complete picture of its functionality.
6: Userspace Governor:
This governor, exceptionally rare for the world of mobile devices, allows any program executed by the user to set the CPU's operating frequency. This governor is more common amongst servers or desktop PCs where an application (like a power profile app) needs privileges to set the CPU clockspeed.
7: Min Max
well this governor makes use of only min & maximum frequency based on workload... no intermediate frequencies are used.
8: Interactive Governor:
Much like the OnDemand governor, the Interactive governor dynamically scales CPU clockspeed in response to the workload placed on the CPU by the user. This is where the similarities end. Interactive is significantly more responsive than OnDemand, because it's faster at scaling to maximum frequency.
Unlike OnDemand, which you'll recall scales clockspeed in the context of a work queue, Interactive scales the clockspeed over the course of a timer set arbitrarily by the kernel developer. In other words, if an application demands a ramp to maximum clockspeed (by placing 100% load on the CPU), a user can execute another task before the governor starts reducing CPU frequency. This can eliminate the frequency bouncing discussed in the OnDemand section. Because of this timer, Interactive is also better prepared to utilize intermediate clockspeeds that fall between the minimum and maximum CPU frequencies. This is another pro-battery life benefit of Interactive.
However, because Interactive is permitted to spend more time at maximum frequency than OnDemand (for device performance reasons), the battery-saving benefits discussed above are effectively negated. Long story short, Interactive offers better performance than OnDemand (some say the best performance of any governor) and negligibly different battery life.
Interactive also makes the assumption that a user turning the screen on will shortly be followed by the user interacting with some application on their device. Because of this, screen on triggers a ramp to maximum clockspeed, followed by the timer behavior described above.
9: InteractiveX Governor:
Created by kernel developer "Imoseyon," the InteractiveX governor is based heavily on the Interactive governor, enhanced with tuned timer parameters to better balance battery vs. performance. The InteractiveX governor's defining feature, however, is that it locks the CPU frequency to the user's lowest defined speed when the screen is off.
10: Smartass
Is based on the concept of the interactive governor.
I have always agreed that in theory the way interactive works – by taking over the idle loop – is very attractive. I have never managed to tweak it so it would behave decently in real life. Smartass is a complete rewrite of the code plus more. I think its a success. Performance is on par with the “old” minmax and I think smartass is a bit more responsive. Battery life is hard to quantify precisely but it does spend much more time at the lower frequencies.
Smartass will also cap the max frequency when sleeping to 352Mhz (or if your min frequency is higher than 352 – why?! – it will cap it to your min frequency). Lets take for example the 528/176 kernel, it will sleep at 352/176. No need for sleep profiles any more!"
11: SmartassV2:
Version 2 of the original smartass governor from Erasmux. Another favorite for many a people. The governor aim for an "ideal frequency", and ramp up more aggressively towards this freq and less aggressive after. It uses different ideal frequencies for screen on and screen off, namely awake_ideal_freq and sleep_ideal_freq. This governor scales down CPU very fast (to hit sleep_ideal_freq soon) while screen is off and scales up rapidly to awake_ideal_freq (500 mhz for GS2 by default) when screen is on. There's no upper limit for frequency while screen is off (unlike Smartass). So the entire frequency range is available for the governor to use during screen-on and screen-off state. The motto of this governor is a balance between performance and battery.
12: Scary
A new governor wrote based on conservative with some smartass features, it scales accordingly to conservatives laws. So it will start from the bottom, take a load sample, if it's above the upthreshold, ramp up only one speed at a time, and ramp down one at a time. It will automatically cap the off screen speeds to 245Mhz, and if your min freq is higher than 245mhz, it will reset the min to 120mhz while screen is off and restore it upon screen awakening, and still scale accordingly to conservatives laws. So it spends most of its time at lower frequencies. The goal of this is to get the best battery life with decent performance. It will give the same performance as conservative right now, it will get tweaked over time.
13: Lagfree:
Lagfree is similar to ondemand. Main difference is it's optimization to become more battery friendly. Frequency is gracefully decreased and increased, unlike ondemand which jumps to 100% too often. Lagfree does not skip any frequency step while scaling up or down. Remember that if there's a requirement for sudden burst of power, lagfree can not satisfy that since it has to raise cpu through each higher frequency step from current. Some users report that video playback using lagfree stutters a little.
14: Smoothass:
The same as the Smartass “governor” But MUCH more aggressive & across the board this one has a better battery life that is about a third better than stock KERNEL
15: Brazilianwax:
Similar to smartassV2. More aggressive ramping, so more performance, less battery
16: SavagedZen:
Another smartassV2 based governor. Achieves good balance between performance & battery as compared to brazilianwax.
17: Lazy:
This governor from Ezekeel is basically an ondemand with an additional parameter min_time_state to specify the minimum time CPU stays on a frequency before scaling up/down. The Idea here is to eliminate any instabilities caused by fast frequency switching by ondemand. Lazy governor polls more often than ondemand, but changes frequency only after completing min_time_state on a step overriding sampling interval. Lazy also has a screenoff_maxfreq parameter which when enabled will cause the governor to always select the maximum frequency while the screen is off.
18: Lionheart:
Lionheart is a conservative-based governor which is based on samsung's update3 source.
The tunables (such as the thresholds and sampling rate) were changed so the governor behaves more like the performance one, at the cost of battery as the scaling is very aggressive.
19: LionheartX
LionheartX is based on Lionheart but has a few changes on the tunables and features a suspend profile based on Smartass governor.
20: Intellidemand:
Intellidemand aka Intelligent Ondemand from Faux is yet another governor that's based on ondemand. Unlike what some users believe, this governor is not the replacement for OC Daemon (Having different governors for sleep and awake). The original intellidemand behaves differently according to GPU usage. When GPU is really busy (gaming, maps, benchmarking, etc) intellidemand behaves like ondemand. When GPU is 'idling' (or moderately busy), intellidemand limits max frequency to a step depending on frequencies available in your device/kernel for saving battery. This is called browsing mode. We can see some 'traces' of interactive governor here. Frequency scale-up decision is made based on idling time of CPU. Lower idling time (= 70%, cpu is scaled up 2 steps - to 800.
If current frequency =1200, Every down_sampling_time Us if cpu load < 70%, cpu is scaled down 1 step - to 1000.
25: Pegasusq/Pegasusd
The Pegasus-q / d is a multi-core based on the Ondemand governor and governor with integrated hot-plugging.
Ongoing processes in the queue, we know that multiple processes can run simultaneously on. These processes are active in an array, which is a field called "Run Queue" queue that is ongoing, with their priority values ​​arranged (priority will be used by the task scheduler, which then decides which process to run next).
To ensure that each process has its fair share of resources, each running for a certain period and will eventually stop and then again placed in the queue until it is your turn again. If a program is terminated, so that others can run the program with the highest priority in the current queue is executed.
26: Hotplugx
It 'a Hotplug modified and optimized for the suspension in off-screen
27: AbissPlug
It 'a Governor derived hotplug, it works the same way, but with the changes in savings for a better battery.
28: MSM DCVS
a very efficient and wide range of Dynamic Clock and
Voltage Scaling (DCVS) which addresses usage models from
active standby to mid and high level processing requirements.
A Krait CPU can smoothly scale from low power, low
leakage mode to blazingly fast performance.
Believe it's a governor that is mfg'd by qualcomm to utilize new on chip features.
MSM is the prefix for the SOC (MSM8960) and DCVS is Dynamic Clock and Voltage Scaling. Makes sense, MSM-DCVS
Credits goes to:
http://icrontic.com/discussion/95140...m-tuner-tegrak
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1369817
@stempox for real thread.Whole thread copied from his thread.
Link to original thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=28647926

[BATTERY GUIDE] Ultimate battery guide and talk topic

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Ultimate battery guide
Battery, one of the most important thing on todays phones. Even if we have awesome battery life we always want more and it is never enough.
This is the small guide to tips, trick and tweaks to improve battery life.
This topic is to share tips and tricks and basically just small talk about battery and sharing screenshots.
Use Gsam or Android battery history to show your battery life.​
Our goal is to make most of the screen on time with average use of 24 hours. So lets start.
Post 1: Tips
Post 2: ROMS, kernels, undervolting, underclocking
Tips to improve battery life
Location services
One of the first thing that your device will ask when you are setting up your phone. Most of the users let them ON and just forgot about them. Location services are battery hungry and the will drain your battery like you drinking juice.
Thing is that you do not need them always, just sometimes. Turn it OFF then. I have them turned off always and when I need it I just simple turn it ON.​
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi scanning is thing that will drain your battery always. When you are out and you are not expecting to use wi-fi any time soon turn it off. You do not need to run scanning all the time.
You could also edit build.prop to reduce.
Edit wifi.supplicant_scan_interval. Default value is 180. You can set it higher to reduce the scanning intervals.​
Signal strength / Network mode
Signal strength is always trouble for battery. Weak signal will drain more battery. Also, constant changing between 4G/3G and 2G will drain battery faster.
Tweak to this is to set your phone to only use 2G, 3G or 4G.
Example: when I am not using my phone, or it is connected to wifi my network is on 2G. I dont need 3G or 4G then and changing network state is disabled then because it will stay always on 2G. I found it has positive effect on battery.
When I need, I just simple toggle 3G or 4G.​
Screen brightness
Screen is the thing that drains most of our battery. There is not much philosophy here. Higher brightness will drain more battery.
My personal setup is that I do not use auto brightness. I always change brightness manually. Right now during winter my brightness does not go more then 25% outside, and inside it is lower. At night it is under 10%.
I found that not using auto brightness has also slight positive effect on battery.​
Syncing / Airplane mode / Vibration / Animations / Task Killers
Lets start in order.
Syncing: more syncing your device does it drains more battery. On your phone probably you do not to sync all accounts and apps you have every few minutes or hours. Set those apps you do not need on manual sync.
Airplane mode: I am using airplane mode during night because I do not want to be disturbed during sleep. With airplane mode battery consumption during night is 0%. Yes, zero percent.
Vibration: more your device vibrates, more battery it drains. You can reduce vibrations on keyboard settings and similar. I found that is not much effect on battery but it has slight.
Animations: animations drains your battery also and who really needs them. Personally, I am annoyed with them and I always switch them to 0 or .5. You can do that in Settings-Developers options
Task Killers: task killers, clean maters and similar software is a big NO. You dont need it. It does more damage then good.​
Bloatware
Yes, bloatware. There is huge amount of bloatware on our phones and we really do not need it. So, what to do? Freeze that bloatware.
You can find list of apps HERE. There is also available tool for auto disable, ImproveG3​
ROMS and kernels
Custom ROMs and kernels will give you in most cases better battery life then stock firmware. Plus there is huge amount of options to play with. You can read more in posts bellow.​
Summary:
If you change some of those thing you will see the effect.
You can always use apps like Greenify or Tasker and play with their options.​
How to follow your battery life
GSam Battery Monitor
This one of the most useful apps to track your battery. On Lollipop (even on Kitkat) it will not give you much useful info without root.
If you are using it without root everytime you reboot the phone statistic would be reset also. If you have root it will give you access to wakelocks and some other stuff, plus stats would not get reseted.
Play store link​
Wakelock detector
Wakelocks, one of the painful things on phone. If you see your battery is draining faster in idle then you got problem with wakelocks. This is useful app because it shows wakelocks on very simple setup and you can discover which app is causing which wakelock.
Play Store link​
Disable service
If you are using Wakelock detector you need this app also. With this app you can freeze every single process that app can launch. It will provide detail look on all processes from apps. With this app I have reduced wakelocks to 1%.
Play Store link​

ROMS
Discussion about ROMs never looked nice. It always gets to what you personally like. Some ROMs will be easier on battery, some will be rough. You will never know before you try them.​
Kernels
Kernels are similar to ROMS but you can play with them. Currently there is not much kernels available but you can play even with stock one.
I recommend to use Trickster MOD Kernel Settings app to play with kernel settings.​
Undervoting
Undervolting is the thing when you control how much power each CPU frequency can have. Trickster MOD app gives really nice view on them. You can undervolt every frequency by itself or all in one.
My personal recommendation is to undervolt them at once. I always use -50 value. Found it stable.
Of course, you can always play with different values but remember: when you play with this do not click on option "Set on Boot" or you will end in bootloop if you click it. Click that option when you find out that values are safe for using and stable.​
Underclocking
Underclocking is changing your CPU frequency. Rough truth is that we dont need our CPU to run on 2,7 GHz in normal use. Only gamers will need that probably but since this is not thread were we are aiming gamers we dont need that high frequency.
Me personally, I use always 1,7 GHz or 1,9 GHz. To my daily usage (most common like everyone else but without games) this is more then enough. Everything is still smooth and runs fast.​
Governors
A CPU governor in Android controls how the CPU raises and lowers its frequency in response to the demands the user is placing on their device. Governors are especially important in smartphones and tablets because they have a large impact on the apparent fluidity of the interface and the battery life of the device over a charge.
You can find explanation hidden here.
Many users have wrote about governors and they are practically the same on most of the phones so I will copy list from droidphile.
On his topic you have more details about governors.
Link to original topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s2/general/ref-kernel-governors-modules-o-t1369817
I) MANUAL:
These are the 19 governors we're talking about.
1) Ondemand
2) Ondemandx
3) Conservative
4) Interactive
5) Interactivex
6) Lulzactive
7) Lulzactiveq
8) Smartass
9) SmartassV2
10) Intellidemand
11) Lazy
12) Lagfree
13) Lionheart
14) LionheartX
15) Brazilianwax
16) SavagedZen
17) Userspacce
18) Powersave
19) Performance
20) Wheatley
21) Smartmax
1) Ondemand:
Default governor in almost all stock kernels. One main goal of the ondemand governor is to switch to max frequency as soon as there is a CPU activity detected to ensure the responsiveness of the system. (You can change this behavior using smooth scaling parameters, refer Siyah tweaks at the end of 3rd post.) Effectively, it uses the CPU busy time as the answer to "how critical is performance right now" question. So Ondemand jumps to maximum frequency when CPU is busy and decreases the frequency gradually when CPU is less loaded/apporaching idle. Even though many of us consider this a reliable governor, it falls short on battery saving and performance on default settings. One potential reason for ondemand governor being not very power efficient is that the governor decide the next target frequency by instant requirement during sampling interval. The instant requirement can response quickly to workload change, but it does not usually reflect workload real CPU usage requirement in a small longer time and it possibly causes frequently change between highest and lowest frequency.
2) Ondemandx:
Basically an ondemand with suspend/wake profiles. This governor is supposed to be a battery friendly ondemand. When screen is off, max frequency is capped at 500 mhz. Even though ondemand is the default governor in many kernel and is considered safe/stable, the support for ondemand/ondemandX depends on CPU capability to do fast frequency switching which are very low latency frequency transitions. I have read somewhere that the performance of ondemand/ondemandx were significantly varying for different i/o schedulers. This is not true for most of the other governors. I personally feel ondemand/ondemandx goes best with SIO I/O scheduler.
3) Conservative:
A slower Ondemand which scales up slowly to save battery. The conservative governor is based on the ondemand governor. It functions like the Ondemand governor by dynamically adjusting frequencies based on processor utilization. However, the conservative governor increases and decreases CPU speed more gradually. Simply put, this governor increases the frequency step by step on CPU load and jumps to lowest frequency on CPU idle. Conservative governor aims to dynamically adjust the CPU frequency to current utilization, without jumping to max frequency. The sampling_down_factor value acts as a negative multiplier of sampling_rate to reduce the frequency that the scheduler samples the CPU utilization. For example, if sampling_rate equal to 20,000 and sampling_down_factor is 2, the governor samples the CPU utilization every 40,000 microseconds.
4) Interactive:
Can be considered a faster ondemand. So more snappier, less battery. Interactive is designed for latency-sensitive, interactive workloads. Instead of sampling at every interval like ondemand, it determines how to scale up when CPU comes out of idle. The governor has the following advantages: 1) More consistent ramping, because existing governors do their CPU load sampling in a workqueue context, but interactive governor does this in a timer context, which gives more consistent CPU load sampling. 2) Higher priority for CPU frequency increase, thus giving the remaining tasks the CPU performance benefit, unlike existing governors which schedule ramp-up work to occur after your performance starved tasks have completed. Interactive It's an intelligent Ondemand because of stability optimizations. Why??
Sampling the CPU load every X ms (like Ondemand) can lead to under-powering the CPU for X ms, leading to dropped frames, stuttering UI, etc. Instead of sampling the CPU at a specified rate, the interactive governor will check whether to scale the CPU frequency up soon after coming out of idle. When the CPU comes out of idle, a timer is configured to fire within 1-2 ticks. If the CPU is very busy between exiting idle and when the timer fires, then we assume the CPU is underpowered and ramp to max frequency.
5) Interactivex:
This is an Interactive governor with a wake profile. More battery friendly than interactive.
6) Lulzactive:
This new find from Tegrak is based on Interactive & Smartass governors and is one of the favorites.
Old Version: When workload is greater than or equal to 60%, the governor scales up CPU to next higher step. When workload is less than 60%, governor scales down CPU to next lower step. When screen is off, frequency is locked to global scaling minimum frequency.
New Version: Three more user configurable parameters: inc_cpu_load, pump_up_step, pump_down_step. Unlike older version, this one gives more control for the user. We can set the threshold at which governor decides to scale up/down. We can also set number of frequency steps to be skipped while polling up and down.
When workload greater than or equal to inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU pump_up_step steps up. When workload is less than inc_cpu_load, governor scales CPU down pump_down_step steps down.
Example:
Consider
inc_cpu_load=70
pump_up_step=2
pump_down_step=1
If current frequency=200, Every up_sampling_time Us if cpu load >= 70%, cpu is scaled up 2 steps - to 800.
If current frequency =1200, Every down_sampling_time Us if cpu load < 70%, cpu is scaled down 1 step - to 1000.
7) Lulzactiveq:
Lulzactiveq is a modified lulzactive governor authored by XDA member robertobsc and is adapted in Siyah kernel for GS2 and GS3. Lulzactiveq aims to optimize the second version of luzactive from Tegrak by a) providing an extra parameter (dec_cpu_load) to make scaling down more sensible, and b) incorporating hotplug logic to the governor. Luzactiveq is the first ever interactive based governor with hotplugging logic inbuilt (atleast the first of its kind for the exynos platform). When CPU comes out of idle loop and it's time to make a scaling decision, if load >= inc_cpu_load CPU is scaled up (like original luzactiveq) and if load <dec_cpu_load, CPU is scaled down. This possibly eliminates the strict single cut-off frequency for luzactiveq to make CPU scaling decisions. Also, stand hotplug logic runs as a separate thread with the governor so that external hotplugging logic is not required to control hotplug in and out (turn On and Off) CPU cores in multi core devices like GS2 or GS3. Only a multi core aware governor makes real sense on muti-core devices. Lulzactiveq and pegasusq aims to do that.
8) Smartass:
Result of Erasmux rewriting the complete code of interactive governor. Main goal is to optimize battery life without comprising performance. Still, not as battery friendly as smartassV2 since screen-on minimum frequency is greater than frequencies used during screen-off. Smartass would jump up to highest frequency too often as well.
9) SmartassV2:
Version 2 of the original smartass governor from Erasmux. Another favorite for many a people. The governor aim for an "ideal frequency", and ramp up more aggressively towards this freq and less aggressive after. It uses different ideal frequencies for screen on and screen off, namely awake_ideal_freq and sleep_ideal_freq. This governor scales down CPU very fast (to hit sleep_ideal_freq soon) while screen is off and scales up rapidly to awake_ideal_freq (500 mhz for GS2 by default) when screen is on. There's no upper limit for frequency while screen is off (unlike Smartass). So the entire frequency range is available for the governor to use during screen-on and screen-off state. The motto of this governor is a balance between performance and battery.
10) Intellidemand:
Intellidemand aka Intelligent Ondemand from Faux is yet another governor that's based on ondemand. Unlike what some users believe, this governor is not the replacement for OC Daemon (Having different governors for sleep and awake). The original intellidemand behaves differently according to GPU usage. When GPU is really busy (gaming, maps, benchmarking, etc) intellidemand behaves like ondemand. When GPU is 'idling' (or moderately busy), intellidemand limits max frequency to a step depending on frequencies available in your device/kernel for saving battery. This is called browsing mode. We can see some 'traces' of interactive governor here. Frequency scale-up decision is made based on idling time of CPU. Lower idling time (<20%) causes CPU to scale-up from current frequency. Frequency scale-down happens at steps=5% of max frequency. (This parameter is tunable only in conservative, among the popular governors )
To sum up, this is an intelligent ondemand that enters browsing mode to limit max frequency when GPU is idling, and (exits browsing mode) behaves like ondemand when GPU is busy; to deliver performance for gaming and such. Intellidemand does not jump to highest frequency when screen is off.
11) Lazy:
This governor from Ezekeel is basically an ondemand with an additional parameter min_time_state to specify the minimum time CPU stays on a frequency before scaling up/down. The Idea here is to eliminate any instabilities caused by fast frequency switching by ondemand. Lazy governor polls more often than ondemand, but changes frequency only after completing min_time_state on a step overriding sampling interval. Lazy also has a screenoff_maxfreq parameter which when enabled will cause the governor to always select the maximum frequency while the screen is off.
12) Lagfree:
Lagfree is similar to ondemand. Main difference is it's optimization to become more battery friendly. Frequency is gracefully decreased and increased, unlike ondemand which jumps to 100% too often. Lagfree does not skip any frequency step while scaling up or down. Remember that if there's a requirement for sudden burst of power, lagfree can not satisfy that since it has to raise cpu through each higher frequency step from current. Some users report that video playback using lagfree stutters a little.
13) Lionheart:
Lionheart is a conservative-based governor which is based on samsung's update3 source. Tweaks comes from 1) Knzo 2) Morfic. The original idea comes from Netarchy. See here. The tunables (such as the thresholds and sampling rate) were changed so the governor behaves more like the performance one, at the cost of battery as the scaling is very aggressive.
To 'experience' Lionheart using conservative, try these tweaks:
sampling_rate:10000 or 20000 or 50000, whichever you feel is safer. (transition latency of the CPU is something below 10ms/10,000uS hence using 10,000 might not be safe).
up_threshold:60
down_threshold:30
freq_step:5
Lionheart goes well with deadline i/o scheduler. When it comes to smoothness (not considering battery drain), a tuned conservative delivers more as compared to a tuned ondemand.
14) LionheartX
LionheartX is based on Lionheart but has a few changes on the tunables and features a suspend profile based on Smartass governor.
15) Brazilianwax:
Similar to smartassV2. More aggressive ramping, so more performance, less battery.
16) SavagedZen:
Another smartassV2 based governor. Achieves good balance between performance & battery as compared to brazilianwax.
17) Userspace:
Instead of automatically determining frequencies, lets user set frequencies.
18) Powersave:
Locks max frequency to min frequency. Can not be used as a screen-on or even screen-off (if scaling min frequency is too low).
19) Performance:
Sets min frequency as max frequency. Use this while benchmarking!
20) Wheatley
Building on the classic 'ondemand' governor is implemented Wheatley governor. The governor has two additional parameters:
target_residency - The minimum average residency in µs which is considered acceptable for a proper efficient usage of the C4 state. Default is 10000 = 10ms.
allowed_misses - The number sampling intervals in a row the average residency is allowed to be lower than target_residency before the governor reduces the frequency. This ensures that the governor is not too aggressive in scaling down the frequency and reduces it just because some background process was temporarily causing a larger number of wakeups. The default is 5.
Wheatley works as planned and does not hinder the proper C4 usage for task where the C4 can be used properly .
For internet browsing the time spend in C4 has increased by 10% points and the average residency has increased by about 1ms. I guess these differences are mostly due to the different browsing behaviour (I spend the last time more multi-tabbing). But at least we can say that Wheatley does not interfere with the proper use of the C4 state during 'light' tasks. For music playback with screen off the time spend in C4 is practically unchanged, however the average residency is reduced from around 30ms to around 18ms, but this is still more than acceptable.
So the results show that Wheatley works as intended and ensures that the C4 state is used whenever the task allows a proper efficient usage of the C4 state. For more demanding tasks which cause a large number of wakeups and prevent the efficient usage of the C4 state, the governor resorts to the next best power saving mechanism and scales down the frequency. So with the new highly-flexible Wheatley governor one can have the best of both worlds.
21) Smartmax
Its no benchmark or ultimate perfromance governor, its a proper balanced ondemand.
The basic idea - which comes from smartass - is the concept of an "ideal" frequency.
The following strategy is used:
1) If load is above upper-threshold and current frequency is below ideal freq
-> jump to ideal in one step
2) If load is above upper-threshold and current frequency is at or above ideal freq
->do "ramp up" steps which will include all frequencies for a specific
amount of time - so compared to ondemand no "jumping" to max frequency
3) if load is below lower-threshold and current frequency is below ideal freq
->do "ramp down" steps
4) if load is below lower-threshold and current frequency is above ideal freq
-> jump down to ideal in one step
All those thresholds ramp steps and frequency stepping times are
fully configurable using sysfs. By default I tried to create a good balance.
The ideal frequency for "us" is 475000 which is the maximal frequency
of the LP mode of the tegra chip. This will allow using LP mode as much as possible
Additional to make it "snappy" smartmax has "touch poke"
So input events from the touchscreen will boost the cpu for a specific
time to a specific frequency.​
Schedulers
Everything has been said about them so I will use droidphile explanations.
Link to original topic: http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s2/general/ref-kernel-governors-modules-o-t1369817
Q. "What purposes does an i/o scheduler serve?"
A.
Minimize hard disk seek latency.
Prioritize I/O requests from processes.
Allocate disk bandwidth for running processes.
Guarantee that certain requests will be served before a deadline.
So in the simplest of simplest form: Kernel controls the disk access using I/O Scheduler.
Q. "What goals every I/O scheduler tries to balance?"
A.
Fairness (let every process have its share of the access to disk)
Performance (try to serve requests close to current disk head position first, because seeking there is fastest)
Real-time (guarantee that a request is serviced in a given time)
Q. "Description, advantages, disadvantages of each I/O Scheduler?"
A.
1) Noop
Inserts all the incoming I/O requests to a First In First Out queue and implements request merging. Best used with storage devices that does not depend on mechanical movement to access data (yes, like our flash drives). Advantage here is that flash drives does not require reordering of multiple I/O requests unlike in normal hard drives.
Advantages:
Serves I/O requests with least number of cpu cycles. (Battery friendly?)
Best for flash drives since there is no seeking penalty.
Good throughput on db systems.
Disadvantages:
Reduction in number of cpu cycles used is proportional to drop in performance.
2) Deadline
Goal is to minimize I/O latency or starvation of a request. The same is achieved by round robin policy to be fair among multiple I/O requests. Five queues are aggressively used to reorder incoming requests.
Advantages:
Nearly a real time scheduler.
Excels in reducing latency of any given single I/O.
Best scheduler for database access and queries.
Bandwidth requirement of a process - what percentage of CPU it needs, is easily calculated.
Like noop, a good scheduler for solid state/flash drives.
Disadvantages:
When system is overloaded, set of processes that may miss deadline is largely unpredictable.
3) CFQ
Completely Fair Queuing scheduler maintains a scalable per-process I/O queue and attempts to distribute the available I/O bandwidth equally among all I/O requests. Each per-process queue contains synchronous requests from processes. Time slice allocated for each queue depends on the priority of the 'parent' process. V2 of CFQ has some fixes which solves process' i/o starvation and some small backward seeks in the hope of improving responsiveness.
Advantages:
Considered to deliver a balanced i/o performance.
Easiest to tune.
Excels on multiprocessor systems.
Best database system performance after deadline.
Disadvantages:
Some users report media scanning takes longest to complete using CFQ. This could be because of the property that since the bandwidth is equally distributed to all i/o operations during boot-up, media scanning is not given any special priority.
Jitter (worst-case-delay) exhibited can sometimes be high, because of the number of tasks competing for the disk.
4) BFQ
Instead of time slices allocation by CFQ, BFQ assigns budgets. Disk is granted to an active process until it's budget (number of sectors) expires. BFQ assigns high budgets to non-read tasks. Budget assigned to a process varies over time as a function of it's behavior.
Advantages:
Believed to be very good for usb data transfer rate.
Believed to be the best scheduler for HD video recording and video streaming. (because of less jitter as compared to CFQ and others)
Considered an accurate i/o scheduler.
Achieves about 30% more throughput than CFQ on most workloads.
Disadvantages:
Not the best scheduler for benchmarking.
Higher budget assigned to a process can affect interactivity and increased latency.
5) SIO
Simple I/O scheduler aims to keep minimum overhead to achieve low latency to serve I/O requests. No priority quesues concepts, but only basic merging. Sio is a mix between noop & deadline. No reordering or sorting of requests.
Advantages:
Simple, so reliable.
Minimized starvation of requests.
Disadvantages:
Slow random-read speeds on flash drives, compared to other schedulers.
Sequential-read speeds on flash drives also not so good.
6) V(R)
Unlike other schedulers, synchronous and asynchronous requests are not treated separately, instead a deadline is imposed for fairness. The next request to be served is based on it's distance from last request.
Advantages:
May be best for benchmarking because at the peak of it's 'form' VR performs best.
I/O Schedulers
Disadvantages:
Performance fluctuation results in below-average performance at times.
Least reliable/most unstable.
7) Anticipatory
Based on two facts
i) Disk seeks are really slow.
ii) Write operations can happen whenever, but there is always some process waiting for read operation.
So anticipatory prioritize read operations over write. It anticipates synchronous read operations.
Advantages:
Read requests from processes are never starved.
As good as noop for read-performance on flash drives.
Disadvantages:
'Guess works' might not be always reliable.
Reduced write-performance on high performance disks.​

reserved

Lets talk and share tips

Do you have a preference for governor and I/O? I'm coming from a rather old phone that didn't have most of these options. I think I've been using interactive and zen, which apparently wasn't even listed.

Ok so the best setting for governors and I/O control battery life and perfomance

veekay said:
Do you have a preference for governor and I/O? I'm coming from a rather old phone that didn't have most of these options. I think I've been using interactive and zen, which apparently wasn't even listed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am using SmartassV2 and noop.

TIP
For those who most of the day stay indoors and don't need a very bright screen like me, may install this xposed module, Minimum Brightness.
With this you can lower the minimum brightness of the screen beyond the usual value. It aids in saving quite some juice. :good:

Nice thread my frind!
I'm using this settings on Cloudy Rom and Rin Kernel:
GOV: Intellidemand 300/1,9 GHz
I/O: 4096/vr
MP off
Intelliplug on
GPU: simple_ondemand 578 MHz
UV MPU:
300 MHz = 675 mV
422 = 700
652 = 725
729 = 730
883 = 750
960 = 760
1036 = 770
1190 = 790
1267 = 800
1497 = 830
1574 = 840
1728 = 870
1804 = 885
1958 = 915
2112 = 945
2188 = 960
2342 = 990
2457 = 1010
2534 = 1025
2611 = 1040
2688 = 1055
2764 MHz = 1070 mV
Still testng as this is my second week with the device.

Saratoga79 said:
Nice thread my frind!
I'm using this settings on Cloudy Rom and Rin Kernel:
GOV: Intellidemand 300/1,9 GHz
I/O: 4096/vr
MP off
Intelliplug on
GPU: simple_ondemand 578 MHz
UV MPU:
300 MHz = 675 mV
422 = 700
652 = 725
729 = 730
883 = 750
960 = 760
1036 = 770
1190 = 790
1267 = 800
1497 = 830
1574 = 840
1728 = 870
1804 = 885
1958 = 915
2112 = 945
2188 = 960
2342 = 990
2457 = 1010
2534 = 1025
2611 = 1040
2688 = 1055
2764 MHz = 1070 mV
Still testng as this is my second week with the device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice setup.
On first look it looks like stable setup.

DelBoy said:
Nice setup.
On first look it looks like stable setup.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks buddy!
Yes it is pretty stable with no reboots or feezes. Also perfomance seems to be good enought and I haven't notice any lag.

This is my todays battery.
22% left. Used 75% with 19 hours on battery and SOT 5 hours for now.
During this 19 hours airplane mode was ON for like 6 hours during the night.
Results can get better. This is on V20A. I believe V20D will get me better results.

Wow! Really nice stats!!!
Do you have better battery on 5.0 or 4.4.2? I'm still on 4.4.2 but looking forward to jump to 5.0.

Saratoga79 said:
Wow! Really nice stats!!!
Do you have better battery on 5.0 or 4.4.2? I'm still on 4.4.2 but looking forward to jump to 5.0.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Early to judge, but it is the same I believe. Not much difference.

Updated post with few more governors

Very nice one
Would you mind adding a link to ImproveG3 to the "Bloatware" section?
Oh and I didn't change much cpu wise, just Amplify'ed Wakelocks RILK, NlpWakeLock and NlpCollectorWakeLock, device remains at 100% during night (~7-8 hours) without using airplane or turning off data/wifi/syncing
Don't have extremely many apps installed though, and set syncing intervals that make sense, depending on app/account.
Thank you very much.
Regards,
sub

@subworx - added

How can I use those governors I have Stweaks but can't find it there

Saratoga79 said:
Wow! Really nice stats!!!
Do you have better battery on 5.0 or 4.4.2? I'm still on 4.4.2 but looking forward to jump to 5.0.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me 4.4.2 has a lot better battery life

AAA118 said:
How can I use those governors I have Stweaks but can't find it there
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to have custom kernel that has that governors (Rin kernel, or ChupaChups).
After that use TricksterMod or CPUcontrol to change governors.

[GUIDE] CPU Governor's Explained

Many basic android users must be confused about what are Governors...what to they do.
So in this thread Each & Every governor is well explained..to clear all of ur doubts.
Link to another thread where Android Kernel/Governors/Tweaking well explained by @droidphile
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1369817
Most of us are flash maniacs, and we do it a lot. But after a kernel flash, we wonder: what actually are governors :what:
Android CPU governors explained
1: OnDemand
2: OndemandX
3: Performance
4: Powersave
5: Conservative
6: Userspace
7: Min Max
8: Interactive
9: InteractiveX
10: Smartass
11: SmartassV2
12: Scary
13: Lagfree
14: Smoothass
15: Brazilianwax
16: SavagedZen
17: Lazy
18: Lionheart
19: LionheartX
20: Intellidemand
21: Hotplug
22: BadAss
23: Wheatley
24: Lulzactive
25: Pegasusq/Pegasusd
26: hotplugx
27: AbissPlug
28: MSM DCVS
29: IntelliActive
30: Adaptive
31: Nightmare
32: ZZmove
Info on I/O Scheduler go here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=7649851
1: OnDemand Governor:
This governor has a hair trigger for boosting clockspeed to the maximum speed set by the user. If the CPU load placed by the user abates, the OnDemand governor will slowly step back down through the kernel's frequency steppings until it settles at the lowest possible frequency, or the user executes another task to demand a ramp.
OnDemand has excellent interface fluidity because of its high-frequency bias, but it can also have a relatively negative effect on battery life versus other governors. OnDemand is commonly chosen by smartphone manufacturers because it is well-tested, reliable, and virtually guarantees the smoothest possible performance for the phone. This is so because users are vastly more likely to ***** about performance than they are the few hours of extra battery life another governor could have granted them.
This final fact is important to know before you read about the Interactive governor: OnDemand scales its clockspeed in a work queue context. In other words, once the task that triggered the clockspeed ramp is finished, OnDemand will attempt to move the clockspeed back to minimum. If the user executes another task that triggers OnDemand's ramp, the clockspeed will bounce from minimum to maximum. This can happen especially frequently if the user is multi-tasking. This, too, has negative implications for battery life.
2: OndemandX:
Basically an ondemand with suspend/wake profiles. This governor is supposed to be a battery friendly ondemand. When screen is off, max frequency is capped at 500 mhz. Even though ondemand is the default governor in many kernel and is considered safe/stable, the support for ondemand/ondemandX depends on CPU capability to do fast frequency switching which are very low latency frequency transitions. I have read somewhere that the performance of ondemand/ondemandx were significantly varying for different i/o schedulers. This is not true for most of the other governors. I personally feel ondemand/ondemandx goes best with SIO I/O scheduler.
3: Performance Governor:
This locks the phone's CPU at maximum frequency. While this may sound like an ugly idea, there is growing evidence to suggest that running a phone at its maximum frequency at all times will allow a faster race-to-idle. Race-to-idle is the process by which a phone completes a given task, such as syncing email, and returns the CPU to the extremely efficient low-power state. This still requires extensive testing, and a kernel that properly implements a given CPU's C-states (low power states).
4: Powersave Governor:
The opposite of the Performance governor, the Powersave governor locks the CPU frequency at the lowest frequency set by the user.
5:Conservative Governor:
This biases the phone to prefer the lowest possible clockspeed as often as possible. In other words, a larger and more persistent load must be placed on the CPU before the conservative governor will be prompted to raise the CPU clockspeed. Depending on how the developer has implemented this governor, and the minimum clockspeed chosen by the user, the conservative governor can introduce choppy performance. On the other hand, it can be good for battery life.
The Conservative Governor is also frequently described as a "slow OnDemand," if that helps to give you a more complete picture of its functionality.
6: Userspace Governor:
This governor, exceptionally rare for the world of mobile devices, allows any program executed by the user to set the CPU's operating frequency. This governor is more common amongst servers or desktop PCs where an application (like a power profile app) needs privileges to set the CPU clockspeed.
7: Min Max
well this governor makes use of only min & maximum frequency based on workload... no intermediate frequencies are used.
8: Interactive Governor:
Much like the OnDemand governor, the Interactive governor dynamically scales CPU clockspeed in response to the workload placed on the CPU by the user. This is where the similarities end. Interactive is significantly more responsive than OnDemand, because it's faster at scaling to maximum frequency.
Unlike OnDemand, which you'll recall scales clockspeed in the context of a work queue, Interactive scales the clockspeed over the course of a timer set arbitrarily by the kernel developer. In other words, if an application demands a ramp to maximum clockspeed (by placing 100% load on the CPU), a user can execute another task before the governor starts reducing CPU frequency. This can eliminate the frequency bouncing discussed in the OnDemand section. Because of this timer, Interactive is also better prepared to utilize intermediate clockspeeds that fall between the minimum and maximum CPU frequencies. This is another pro-battery life benefit of Interactive.
However, because Interactive is permitted to spend more time at maximum frequency than OnDemand (for device performance reasons), the battery-saving benefits discussed above are effectively negated. Long story short, Interactive offers better performance than OnDemand (some say the best performance of any governor) and negligibly different battery life.
Interactive also makes the assumption that a user turning the screen on will shortly be followed by the user interacting with some application on their device. Because of this, screen on triggers a ramp to maximum clockspeed, followed by the timer behavior described above.
9: InteractiveX Governor:
Created by kernel developer "Imoseyon," the InteractiveX governor is based heavily on the Interactive governor, enhanced with tuned timer parameters to better balance battery vs. performance. The InteractiveX governor's defining feature, however, is that it locks the CPU frequency to the user's lowest defined speed when the screen is off.
10: Smartass
Is based on the concept of the interactive governor.
I have always agreed that in theory the way interactive works – by taking over the idle loop – is very attractive. I have never managed to tweak it so it would behave decently in real life. Smartass is a complete rewrite of the code plus more. I think its a success. Performance is on par with the “old” minmax and I think smartass is a bit more responsive. Battery life is hard to quantify precisely but it does spend much more time at the lower frequencies.
Smartass will also cap the max frequency when sleeping to 352Mhz (or if your min frequency is higher than 352 – why?! – it will cap it to your min frequency). Lets take for example the 528/176 kernel, it will sleep at 352/176. No need for sleep profiles any more!"
11: SmartassV2:
Version 2 of the original smartass governor from Erasmux. Another favorite for many a people. The governor aim for an "ideal frequency", and ramp up more aggressively towards this freq and less aggressive after. It uses different ideal frequencies for screen on and screen off, namely awake_ideal_freq and sleep_ideal_freq. This governor scales down CPU very fast (to hit sleep_ideal_freq soon) while screen is off and scales up rapidly to awake_ideal_freq (500 mhz for GS2 by default) when screen is on. There's no upper limit for frequency while screen is off (unlike Smartass). So the entire frequency range is available for the governor to use during screen-on and screen-off state. The motto of this governor is a balance between performance and battery.
12: Scary
A new governor wrote based on conservative with some smartass features, it scales accordingly to conservatives laws. So it will start from the bottom, take a load sample, if it's above the upthreshold, ramp up only one speed at a time, and ramp down one at a time. It will automatically cap the off screen speeds to 245Mhz, and if your min freq is higher than 245mhz, it will reset the min to 120mhz while screen is off and restore it upon screen awakening, and still scale accordingly to conservatives laws. So it spends most of its time at lower frequencies. The goal of this is to get the best battery life with decent performance. It will give the same performance as conservative right now, it will get tweaked over time.
13: Lagfree:
Lagfree is similar to ondemand. Main difference is it's optimization to become more battery friendly. Frequency is gracefully decreased and increased, unlike ondemand which jumps to 100% too often. Lagfree does not skip any frequency step while scaling up or down. Remember that if there's a requirement for sudden burst of power, lagfree can not satisfy that since it has to raise cpu through each higher frequency step from current. Some users report that video playback using lagfree stutters a little.
14: Smoothass:
The same as the Smartass “governor” But MUCH more aggressive & across the board this one has a better battery life that is about a third better than stock KERNEL
15: Brazilianwax:
Similar to smartassV2. More aggressive ramping, so more performance, less battery
16: SavagedZen:
Another smartassV2 based governor. Achieves good balance between performance & battery as compared to brazilianwax.
17: Lazy:
This governor from Ezekeel is basically an ondemand with an additional parameter min_time_state to specify the minimum time CPU stays on a frequency before scaling up/down. The Idea here is to eliminate any instabilities caused by fast frequency switching by ondemand. Lazy governor polls more often than ondemand, but changes frequency only after completing min_time_state on a step overriding sampling interval. Lazy also has a screenoff_maxfreq parameter which when enabled will cause the governor to always select the maximum frequency while the screen is off.
18: Lionheart:
Lionheart is a conservative-based governor which is based on samsung's update3 source.
The tunables (such as the thresholds and sampling rate) were changed so the governor behaves more like the performance one, at the cost of battery as the scaling is very aggressive.
19: LionheartX
LionheartX is based on Lionheart but has a few changes on the tunables and features a suspend profile based on Smartass governor.
20: Intellidemand:
Intellidemand aka Intelligent Ondemand from Faux is yet another governor that's based on ondemand. Unlike what some users believe, this governor is not the replacement for OC Daemon (Having different governors for sleep and awake). The original intellidemand behaves differently according to GPU usage. When GPU is really busy (gaming, maps, benchmarking, etc) intellidemand behaves like ondemand. When GPU is 'idling' (or moderately busy), intellidemand limits max frequency to a step depending on frequencies available in your device/kernel for saving battery. This is called browsing mode. We can see some 'traces' of interactive governor here. Frequency scale-up decision is made based on idling time of CPU. Lower idling time (= 70%, cpu is scaled up 2 steps - to 800.
If current frequency =1200, Every down_sampling_time Us if cpu load < 70%, cpu is scaled down 1 step - to 1000.
25: Pegasusq/Pegasusd
The Pegasus-q / d is a multi-core based on the Ondemand governor and governor with integrated hot-plugging.
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