[Shawn Embedded]

Hi cb guys, I'm new here.
But I'm not new to blackberry.
Q10, passport silver, and the latest DTEK60 are in my hand.
Actually, I'm a fan of blackberry. Before that, Nokia 1110 is used util it's retired.

Ok, so what's the topic today?
Yeah, it seems there is a weird problem with my DTEK60.
Here comes the picture first.




My question is why, why the core3 is hotplugged to offline, what policy triggers this action.
Well, ok, you maybe tell me it's because phone is overheated.
But who cares, I don't care even a little.
overheated? go ahead. I don't care about that. what I want is the experience when gaming.

Ok, it's the most securitied phone on the earth. I have no idea how ot hack it to get the root preveledge and modify the thermal-engine.conf of perf-related things to stop the stupid policy.

Finally, I want to ask you guys, have you any ideas on this.
I want to stop that stupid thermal policy, or are there any other problems which is the root-cause of hotplugging the core3, the BIG in BIG.little.
I just what the high performace.

Thank you all guys.
Greeting from China.

[Bla1ze]

You're not going to be able to disable it unless you have root access and even then, not sure you could. Other than it being set on device, not sure what could be setting the policy.

[Shawn Embedded]

Bla1ze

Hi Bla1ze,

Ok, here, I'm an Android device driver engineer working in an android-ODM manufecture in China.
I bought this DTEK60 from United Kingdom with sth. named oversea buying....
Back to this topic, I have some debugging or tuning experience on thermal on qualcomm 820 SoC.
What is thermal?
　 Simply speaking, it's the policy to balance the power-consumption and performance. 4 cores in Qualcomm 820, BIG 2.15GHz, Little 1.75GHz, or sth., when the task load is increasing, the cpu frequency goes high, the power-consumption goes high, the temprature of the soc, the skin will go high.
For gaming, or sth with high requirements of cpu frequency, the BIG one must stand on their feet, to provide power for riding these case. This is the mechanism that ARM calls it BIG.Little. power and performance both in their views.
Back to my question, no one can tell me what is the reason or what policy triggers the hotplug of core3, which is a BIG core providing power for high performace requirements.
I donot care the heat, I donot care the battery remaining, what I care is the performance, it's the Qualcomm 820, the most powerful SoC, but with this DTEK60 in my hand, I cannot experience the fluent game, in fact, a really ******* terrible nightmare.
The blackberry does not do much on the optimization on power, on performance. Maybe one would say, that is an android-phone, yeah, I agree, but what if it's a AOSP android phone with blackberry security patchs. That is it, no optimization on other things, power, performance, user experience. They don't care, do they?

Maybe this problem will just be there. No one will touch, No one will care. Who cares, I. but I don't have any methods to do anything, since this is the most securitied android-phone on the earth.
I'm a fan of blackberry, same to blackberry-os phones and blackberry android inside phones.
But from the experience everyday, it's just a android-phone, that's all. Ok, with security patches.
For My question, what I can do is only to see "oh, core3 is hotplugged offline, oh, core3 is online again". Nothing more than that. Speaking to the reason why is that? No one knows.
A totally black-box that you cannot touch, you only can use it. No right to control it even if that's your phone.

Bye.

[YeemanBB]

I found a similar situation with the 8-core DTEK 50. Core 0-3 run at 1.5 GHz. Core 4-7 at 1.2 GHz. However, only a max of 2 of the higher speed cores run at any point in time. At least two of the higher speed cores always sit idle. When the battery gets low, all the higher speed cores get shut down, leaving the entire load to the lower speed cores. This results in the lower speed cores running at max speed at all time, rapidly increasing the CPU temperature and draining the battery even faster. Almost all websites doesn't load properly because the low speed cores can't handle the screen rendering. I find such thermal/battery policy nonsensical and self defeating. I would much prefer to have an option to run all the higher speed cores when I need all the CPU power that I can get. I can handle the battery and the heat by plugging into a charger and putting the phone on an ice pack.

[Shawn Embedded]

I don't think blackberry will focus on this, even a littile. This kind of questions does not come on their list.
Or may I say that they have no experiece on optimization on android-phone, except the securti parts that they are so good at.
No offense, but maybe that's the fact.

[YeemanBB]

I am not sure if this is a BlackBerry issue or a TCL issue. I just find it ridiculous that someone dictates how it should work with no option for the user to change it. When I bought the phone, I was, rightly or wrongly, led to believe that all the cpu cores could be used to operate the phone. If only max of 6 are available at anytime, they should mention it.

[thurask]

Which CPU info app is that? It's not likely to get fixed but if I can reproduce it I can file a bug report.

[thurask]

Never mind, found it (Trepn):



This is a DTEK60 on the March patch.

[YeemanBB]

My DTEK 50 also with the March patch.

[mad_mdx]

Can you take a screenshot in game? Why would it use all cores when it's just navigating the UI?

[YeemanBB]

Can you take a screenshot in game? Why would it use all cores when it's just navigating the UI?

I don't have any game on my phone. As you can tell, the screenshot was taken when the phone was doing nothing. So why only 2, not all 4, of the higher speed cores are inactive.

Just to let you know, I monitor cpu frequencies all the time with Tinycore. If you look at my screenshot, the bar in the middle at the top of the status bar is the cpu, cpu temperature and battery temperature monitor. The section of the bar on the left shows the cpu activities. There are 8 white lines corresponding to each of the core. The top 4 lines are for the higher speed cores. This monitor stays on all the time even when the status bar goes off. I have had the phone since August and I have never seen all the lines on the top half of the cpu monitor light up at the same time even when the phone is lagging. This tells me that not all of the higher speed cores have ever worked simultaneously on my phone.

[Uzi]

No wonder other phone feel faster than BlackBerry android phone, lack of optimization

[thurask]

No wonder other phone feel faster than BlackBerry android phone, lack of optimization

Other phones have some combination of dedication and manpower behind them.

[thurask]

Can reproduce this over here. DTEK60 BBA100-1 running AAJ934.



Filed a bug report, for what it's worth.

[Centerman66]

I don't seem to have that problem with core 3. DTEK60 running AAJ934.

[Uzi]

I don't seem to have that problem with core 3. DTEK60 running AAJ934.

Did you running intense game?

[Centerman66]

Did you running intense game?

I did not. I don't have any games on this phone.

[Uzi]

I did not. I don't have any games on this phone.

The problem happen when you running intense game, the cpu got throttle

[Centerman66]

The problem happen when you running intense game, the cpu got throttle

In the OP the pics show the third cpu going unused while just in the home screen. No game or app active.

[Uzi]

In the OP the pics show the third cpu going unused while just in the home screen. No game or app active.

Probably run in the background, this is on priv

[Shawn Embedded]

Maybe you'll tell me the SoC is broken.
It's not always hotplugged offline, but sometimes. Once offline, hard to come back to online.
So there must be some problems on the software side.
One word, blackberry just made it, but not optimize it. That's all.

[Shawn Embedded]

Here come other things, hmm, I will say, it's just related to the thermal of the device. Let's see.
First a few pictures which take a shot when the core3 back to life online just after I feel this phone is cool, not warm.
Yes, the core3 is back to life as I said in the previous post. There is no problem with hardware.




Ok, now, a device info hw apk is used to monitor the thermal as you can see below.
I will make thing happen.
I just do one thing: plug the charger to fast-charge the phone, which will cause the temperature changes gradually high.






until now, so far so good ?
Then go ahead.
The truth comes, bang!!!!!





So, what would you guys say by now?

[Shawn Embedded]

The root cause I suspect is the thermal.
That policy temprature threshold is too low, which is very easy to trigger the corresponding actions to hotplug core3 offline.
That requirement is so easy to reach, which means, the thermal policy is too strict for normal use, as a result, which makes the user's experience so ******* terrible.

[Uzi]

The root cause I suspect is the thermal.
That policy temprature threshold is too low, which is very easy to trigger the corresponding actions to hotplug core3 offline.
That requirement is so easy to reach, which means, the thermal policy is too strict for normal use, as a result, which makes the user's experience so ******* terrible.

Imagine using the priv the device easy to get hot and then the performance bog down

[Shawn Embedded]

yes, so by now, we can conclude that, DTEK60 thermal optimization is terrible, or even no thermal optimization until now.
Let's wait an unknown ota update to fix this.