7 Copyright (c) 2017 Intel Corp., Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
9 Sleep states are global low-power states of the entire system in which user
10 space code cannot be executed and the overall system activity is significantly
14 Sleep States That Can Be Supported
15 ==================================
17 Depending on its configuration and the capabilities of the platform it runs on,
18 the Linux kernel can support up to four system sleep states, includig
19 hibernation and up to three variants of system suspend. The sleep states that
20 can be supported by the kernel are listed below.
27 This is a generic, pure software, light-weight variant of system suspend (also
28 referred to as S2I or S2Idle). It allows more energy to be saved relative to
29 runtime idle by freezing user space, suspending the timekeeping and putting all
30 I/O devices into low-power states (possibly lower-power than available in the
31 working state), such that the processors can spend time in their deepest idle
32 states while the system is suspended.
34 The system is woken up from this state by in-band interrupts, so theoretically
35 any devices that can cause interrupts to be generated in the working state can
36 also be set up as wakeup devices for S2Idle.
38 This state can be used on platforms without support for :ref:`standby <standby>`
39 or :ref:`suspend-to-RAM <s2ram>`, or it can be used in addition to any of the
40 deeper system suspend variants to provide reduced resume latency. It is always
41 supported if the :c:macro:`CONFIG_SUSPEND` kernel configuration option is set.
48 This state, if supported, offers moderate, but real, energy savings, while
49 providing a relatively straightforward transition back to the working state. No
50 operating state is lost (the system core logic retains power), so the system can
51 go back to where it left off easily enough.
53 In addition to freezing user space, suspending the timekeeping and putting all
54 I/O devices into low-power states, which is done for :ref:`suspend-to-idle
55 <s2idle>` too, nonboot CPUs are taken offline and all low-level system functions
56 are suspended during transitions into this state. For this reason, it should
57 allow more energy to be saved relative to :ref:`suspend-to-idle <s2idle>`, but
58 the resume latency will generally be greater than for that state.
60 The set of devices that can wake up the system from this state usually is
61 reduced relative to :ref:`suspend-to-idle <s2idle>` and it may be necessary to
62 rely on the platform for setting up the wakeup functionality as appropriate.
64 This state is supported if the :c:macro:`CONFIG_SUSPEND` kernel configuration
65 option is set and the support for it is registered by the platform with the
66 core system suspend subsystem. On ACPI-based systems this state is mapped to
67 the S1 system state defined by ACPI.
74 This state (also referred to as STR or S2RAM), if supported, offers significant
75 energy savings as everything in the system is put into a low-power state, except
76 for memory, which should be placed into the self-refresh mode to retain its
77 contents. All of the steps carried out when entering :ref:`standby <standby>`
78 are also carried out during transitions to S2RAM. Additional operations may
79 take place depending on the platform capabilities. In particular, on ACPI-based
80 systems the kernel passes control to the platform firmware (BIOS) as the last
81 step during S2RAM transitions and that usually results in powering down some
82 more low-level components that are not directly controlled by the kernel.
84 The state of devices and CPUs is saved and held in memory. All devices are
85 suspended and put into low-power states. In many cases, all peripheral buses
86 lose power when entering S2RAM, so devices must be able to handle the transition
87 back to the "on" state.
89 On ACPI-based systems S2RAM requires some minimal boot-strapping code in the
90 platform firmware to resume the system from it. This may be the case on other
93 The set of devices that can wake up the system from S2RAM usually is reduced
94 relative to :ref:`suspend-to-idle <s2idle>` and :ref:`standby <standby>` and it
95 may be necessary to rely on the platform for setting up the wakeup functionality
98 S2RAM is supported if the :c:macro:`CONFIG_SUSPEND` kernel configuration option
99 is set and the support for it is registered by the platform with the core system
100 suspend subsystem. On ACPI-based systems it is mapped to the S3 system state
108 This state (also referred to as Suspend-to-Disk or STD) offers the greatest
109 energy savings and can be used even in the absence of low-level platform support
110 for system suspend. However, it requires some low-level code for resuming the
111 system to be present for the underlying CPU architecture.
113 Hibernation is significantly different from any of the system suspend variants.
114 It takes three system state changes to put it into hibernation and two system
115 state changes to resume it.
117 First, when hibernation is triggered, the kernel stops all system activity and
118 creates a snapshot image of memory to be written into persistent storage. Next,
119 the system goes into a state in which the snapshot image can be saved, the image
120 is written out and finally the system goes into the target low-power state in
121 which power is cut from almost all of its hardware components, including memory,
122 except for a limited set of wakeup devices.
124 Once the snapshot image has been written out, the system may either enter a
125 special low-power state (like ACPI S4), or it may simply power down itself.
126 Powering down means minimum power draw and it allows this mechanism to work on
127 any system. However, entering a special low-power state may allow additional
128 means of system wakeup to be used (e.g. pressing a key on the keyboard or
129 opening a laptop lid).
131 After wakeup, control goes to the platform firmware that runs a boot loader
132 which boots a fresh instance of the kernel (control may also go directly to
133 the boot loader, depending on the system configuration, but anyway it causes
134 a fresh instance of the kernel to be booted). That new instance of the kernel
135 (referred to as the ``restore kernel``) looks for a hibernation image in
136 persistent storage and if one is found, it is loaded into memory. Next, all
137 activity in the system is stopped and the restore kernel overwrites itself with
138 the image contents and jumps into a special trampoline area in the original
139 kernel stored in the image (referred to as the ``image kernel``), which is where
140 the special architecture-specific low-level code is needed. Finally, the
141 image kernel restores the system to the pre-hibernation state and allows user
144 Hibernation is supported if the :c:macro:`CONFIG_HIBERNATION` kernel
145 configuration option is set. However, this option can only be set if support
146 for the given CPU architecture includes the low-level code for system resume.
149 Basic ``sysfs`` Interfaces for System Suspend and Hibernation
150 =============================================================
152 The following files located in the :file:`/sys/power/` directory can be used by
153 user space for sleep states control.
156 This file contains a list of strings representing sleep states supported
157 by the kernel. Writing one of these strings into it causes the kernel
158 to start a transition of the system into the sleep state represented by
161 In particular, the strings "disk", "freeze" and "standby" represent the
162 :ref:`hibernation <hibernation>`, :ref:`suspend-to-idle <s2idle>` and
163 :ref:`standby <standby>` sleep states, respectively. The string "mem"
164 is interpreted in accordance with the contents of the ``mem_sleep`` file
167 If the kernel does not support any system sleep states, this file is
171 This file contains a list of strings representing supported system
172 suspend variants and allows user space to select the variant to be
173 associated with the "mem" string in the ``state`` file described above.
175 The strings that may be present in this file are "s2idle", "shallow"
176 and "deep". The string "s2idle" always represents :ref:`suspend-to-idle
177 <s2idle>` and, by convention, "shallow" and "deep" represent
178 :ref:`standby <standby>` and :ref:`suspend-to-RAM <s2ram>`,
181 Writing one of the listed strings into this file causes the system
182 suspend variant represented by it to be associated with the "mem" string
183 in the ``state`` file. The string representing the suspend variant
184 currently associated with the "mem" string in the ``state`` file
185 is listed in square brackets.
187 If the kernel does not support system suspend, this file is not present.
190 This file contains a list of strings representing different operations
191 that can be carried out after the hibernation image has been saved. The
192 possible options are as follows:
195 Put the system into a special low-power state (e.g. ACPI S4) to
196 make additional wakeup options available and possibly allow the
197 platform firmware to take a simplified initialization path after
201 Power off the system.
204 Reboot the system (useful for diagnostics mostly).
207 Hybrid system suspend. Put the system into the suspend sleep
208 state selected through the ``mem_sleep`` file described above.
209 If the system is successfully woken up from that state, discard
210 the hibernation image and continue. Otherwise, use the image
211 to restore the previous state of the system.
214 Diagnostic operation. Load the image as though the system had
215 just woken up from hibernation and the currently running kernel
216 instance was a restore kernel and follow up with full system
219 Writing one of the listed strings into this file causes the option
220 represented by it to be selected.
222 The currently selected option is shown in square brackets which means
223 that the operation represented by it will be carried out after creating
224 and saving the image next time hibernation is triggered by writing
225 ``disk`` to :file:`/sys/power/state`.
227 If the kernel does not support hibernation, this file is not present.
229 According to the above, there are two ways to make the system go into the
230 :ref:`suspend-to-idle <s2idle>` state. The first one is to write "freeze"
231 directly to :file:`/sys/power/state`. The second one is to write "s2idle" to
232 :file:`/sys/power/mem_sleep` and then to write "mem" to
233 :file:`/sys/power/state`. Likewise, there are two ways to make the system go
234 into the :ref:`standby <standby>` state (the strings to write to the control
235 files in that case are "standby" or "shallow" and "mem", respectively) if that
236 state is supported by the platform. However, there is only one way to make the
237 system go into the :ref:`suspend-to-RAM <s2ram>` state (write "deep" into
238 :file:`/sys/power/mem_sleep` and "mem" into :file:`/sys/power/state`).
240 The default suspend variant (ie. the one to be used without writing anything
241 into :file:`/sys/power/mem_sleep`) is either "deep" (on the majority of systems
242 supporting :ref:`suspend-to-RAM <s2ram>`) or "s2idle", but it can be overridden
243 by the value of the "mem_sleep_default" parameter in the kernel command line.
244 On some ACPI-based systems, depending on the information in the ACPI tables, the
245 default may be "s2idle" even if :ref:`suspend-to-RAM <s2ram>` is supported.