RC6 Call for testing in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin LTS

The Ubuntu Kernel Team has released a call for testing for a set of RC6 power saving patches for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin LTS. Quoting Leann Ogasawara's email to the ubuntu kernel team and ubuntu-devel mailing lists:

"Hi All,

RC6 is a technology which allows the GPU to go into a very low power consumption state when the GPU is idle (down to 0V). It results in considerable power savings when this stage is activated. When comparing under idle loads with machine state where RC6 is disabled, improved power usage of around 40-60% has been witnessed [1].

Up until recently, RC6 was disabled by default for Sandy Bridge systems due to reports of hangs and graphics corruption issues when RC6 was enabled. Intel has now asserted that RC6p (deep RC6) is responsible for the RC6 related issues on Sandy Bridge. As a result, a patch has recently been submitted upstream to disable RC6p for Sandy Bridge [2].

In an effort to provide more exposure and testing for this proposed patch, the Ubuntu Kernel Team has applied this patch to 3.2.0-17.26 and newer Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin kernels. We have additionally enabled plain RC6 by default on Sandy Bridge systems so that users can benefit from the improved power savings by default.

We have decided to post a widespread call for testing from Sandy Bridge owners running Ubuntu 12.04. We hope to capture data which supports the the claims of power saving improvements and therefore justify keeping these patches in the Ubuntu 12.04 kernel. We also want to ensure we do not trigger any issues due to plain RC6 being enabled by default for Sandy Bridge.

If you are running Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) and willing to test and provide feedback, please refer to our PowerManagementRC6 wiki for detailed instructions [3]. Additionally, instructions for reporting any issues with RC6 enabled are also noted on the wiki. We would really appreciate any testing and feedback users are able to provide.

Thanks in advance,
The Ubuntu Kernel Team"

So please contribute to this call for testing by visiting https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagementRC6 and follow the instructions.  Thank you!