I'm trying to get my laptop to be cooler. I've just run powertop and identified some processes which are keeping the CPU in an active state:
41.9% ( 65.7): uhci_hcd:usb6, wifi0 17.9% ( 28.1) java : futex_wait (hrtimer_wakeup) 13.3% ( 20.9) firefox-bin : futex_wait (hrtimer_wakeup) 11.8% ( 18.5) : extra timer interrupt
Just out of curiosity, I've started up irqbalance to see if it would have any effect. Not so far, but I rmmod'ed uhci_hcd to calm that down a bit. If I need it, I'll modprobe it.
I'm downloading the source for 2.6.26-1-openvz-amd64 to see if it has dynticks enabled. I might recompile it with kernel irq balancing disabled.
UPDATE: It does have dynticks enabled.