(In reply to comment #139)
> 
> I tried exiting early out of a few other functions like rv6xx_dpm_init, but
> haven't had any better results.  I put a printk statement in _init, which
> never got printed.. Could we never make it there?  I couldn't find anything
> that comes before _init...

rv6xx_dpm_init() doesn't actually touch the hw, it just initializes the driver
structures used by dpm.  Try returning early in rv6xx_setup_asic().

The order at module load time looks like:

dpm_init()
dpm_setup_asic()
dpm_enable()
dpm_set_power_state()