Dell Getting Linux Power Management Optimized For Their Latest Systems + Upcoming Tiger Lake Desktop

Dell's Linux engineers continue working on improving the Linux kernel's handling around S0ix ACPI sub-states for greater energy savings.

In particular one area that has been problematic is the Intel e1000e network driver that previously disabled S0ix flows due to regressions on some systems with the i219-LM controller. Proper S0ix support though is now critical since Intel effectively ended S3 support with Tiger Lake mobile processors and thus forcing S0ix states for power savings.

This though is much more complicated with S0ix requiring all connected devices/drivers to work in tandem for achieving these lowest power states, it's critical that these Linux driver issues be addressed as otherwise it inhibits the system from enjoying suitable power-savings. More details on the S0ix architecture can be found from Intel's 01.org.

So this in-progress patch series has been improving the S0ix flows for the i219LM chip with the e1000e driver. Following those driver improvements the behavior is then white-listed for tested Dell systems. Those enabled systems include Dell Latitude and Precision Comet Lake hardware as well as their Tiger Lake systems.

Worth noting is the patches do include adding two unrelated Dell Tiger Lake desktop systems as well as another pre-release Dell Tiger Lake notebook. It will be interesting to see these new Dell Tiger Lake desktop and notebook systems and good to see Dell already working to validate them for Linux.

More details via the patch series on the kernel mailing list.