Hi Rock,
just to clarify my frustration: I haven’t received my O6N board yet, so I can’t test anything myself at this point.
I got interested in the Orion lineup fairly recently (October 2025). My last ARM board was an RK3399 (Kobol NAS).
Reading through the discussions here, what strikes me is that we have plenty of observations and findings, but very rarely the full context in which they were obtained.
When two people report different results, it’s almost impossible to tell whether the difference comes from:
- Hardware (O6/O6N/O6T)
- Firmware (0.X, 1.X, Custom)
- EDK2/Boot config (ASPM, /sys/*)
- OS (uname -a, cmdline)
- Accessories (M.2 modules, USB devices)
- Measuring equipment and measurement point
@hong.guo documented the cpuidle states and seems to have provided a fix for core management.
To test, you could try disabling 11/10 cores out of 12 (CPU_OFF) and see if the SoC/firmware accepts that state.
If power consumption drops significantly, it would indicate the CPUs aren’t actually reaching deep idle states.
If it stays high, it would confirm the issue is elsewhere (NoC, DDR, PCIe).
My current reading (theoretical):
ARM : Total Compute 2022 Reference Design Software Developer Guide
ACPI : Power Control System Architecture
ARM CPU Known State in PSCI Specification