[CentOS] Odd issue: power_saving

On a running system, I was just logging in, and it took for-bloody-ever. I run top, and ok, a load of 5 still shouldn't do that; we have folks that do put real loads on these systems. But top shows me power_saving frequently coming to the top, with a 94% - 100% CPU usage, and there's two threads of power_saving. Add to this that I don't *ever* remember seeing such a kernel thread.

So, can I kill either or both threads? Googling some, I see someone suggesting: acpi_pad.disable=1 already added in grub.conf ;-) (after having `modprobe -r acpi_pad`, which solves directly the load issue)

Good idea or not?

mark