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Subject[PATCH] Re: x86_32 tsc/pit and hrtimers
This one is against 2.6.27.


[X86] Add tsc=stable option for marking TSC as stable

This enables legacy hardware or VMs without HPET, LAPIC, or ACPI timers
to enter high-resolution timer mode.

Signed-off-by: Jeff Hansen <jhansen@cardaccess-inc.com>
---
Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt | 4 ++++
arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c | 11 +++++++++++
2 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 1150444..0528bcb 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -2174,6 +2174,10 @@ and is between 256 and 4096 characters. It is defined in the file
Format:
<io>,<irq>,<dma>,<dma2>,<sb_io>,<sb_irq>,<sb_dma>,<mpu_io>,<mpu_irq>

+ tsc= [X86-32,X86-64]
+ tsc=stable: Mark TSC clocksource as stable, enabling
+ high-resolution timer mode on older hardware.
+
turbografx.map[2|3]= [HW,JOY]
TurboGraFX parallel port interface
Format:
diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c b/arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c
index 8f98e9d..70e485e 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c
@@ -98,6 +98,17 @@ int __init notsc_setup(char *str)

__setup("notsc", notsc_setup);

+static struct clocksource clocksource_tsc;
+
+static int __init tscx_setup(char *str)
+{
+ if (!strcmp(str, "stable"))
+ clocksource_tsc.flags &= ~CLOCK_SOURCE_MUST_VERIFY;
+ return 1;
+}
+
+__setup("tsc=", tscx_setup);
+
#define MAX_RETRIES 5
#define SMI_TRESHOLD 50000

--
1.5.6.4
---------------------------------------------------
"If someone's gotta do it, it might as well be me."
On Thu, 9 Oct 2008, Chris Snook wrote:

> Alok Kataria wrote:
>> On Thu, 2008-10-09 at 15:50 -0700, Chris Snook wrote:
>> > Alok Kataria wrote:
>> > > On Thu, 2008-10-09 at 14:03 -0700, Chris Snook wrote:
>> > >
>> > > I agree that in general this should be no, but since this is a
>> > > commandline variable it will be normally set for only those systems
>> > > which have only TSC as a option or know that the TSC is reliable.
>> > > wouldn't doing this be ok for such systems ?
>> > Hardware doesn't deliberately do any TSC synchronization, though you
>> > might get
>> > it by accident in some configurations. A VMware guest gets it for free
>> > thanks
>> > to the hypervisor doing it in software, but we need to run the check
>> > when we're
>> > booting on bare metal.
>>
>> The TSC sync algorithm right now expects that TSC are perfectly in sync
>> between cpus.
>> But, the hardware doesn't deliberately do any synchronization, so we can
>> have situations where TSC was (accidently ? )off by a marginal value
>> during boot and as a result we mark TSC as unstable and don't use it as
>> a clocksource at all. For systems like the ones Jeff is using wouldn't
>> that be a problem. IOW, even though the TSC was *marginally* off during
>> bootup it should still be used as a clocksource, since you have no other
>> option, no ?
>
> You seem to be conflating position and rate. When we mark TSC as stable,
> we're saying it will always advance at a known rate on all CPUs, but this
> says nothing about the relative positions on the different CPUs. That skew
> can be huge on some hardware, not just marginal, so we still need to
> synchronize them at boot time, even though we don't need to (and can't, in
> this case) verify stability with another continuous clock source.
>
> -- Chris
>
>


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