Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 19 Feb 2015 16:38:57 +0200 | From | Adrian Hunter <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/2] perf/x86: Add ability to sample TSC |
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On 19/02/15 15:50, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 02:11:08PM +0200, Adrian Hunter wrote: >> Hi >> >> With the advent of switching perf_clock to CLOCK_MONOTONIC, >> it will not be possible to convert perf_clock directly to/from >> TSC. So add the ability to sample TSC instead. > > Well, you can, mostly. MONOTONIC is only affected by NTP slew rate > changes, not offset changes.
man page says is also subject to adjtime(3)
> > And NTP limits the slew rate to 500 PPM, so even if you would get a
Assuming it is not broken.
> slew change and then not update the userpage data for a second you'd be > maximally off by 0.0005 seconds.
That could still be enough to break the decoder. It will certainly misrepresent the order of events, which is a big loss of information.
> > And that is way below what the current perf clock guarantees on funny > hardware. > > If you're really worried about this; we could maybe get John and Thomas > to allow us a callback on every slew change so we can update the > userpage data ASAP, much reducing the max error. > > Say it takes a 10e5 cycles to update your userpage, then you're never > further off than 50 cycles, which is below your ART multiplier.
You still need to wake up user space to read the userpage.
> > Does that really matter? Also, if you have a stable crystal, the slew > rate change should be minimal and infrequent, never getting you close to > these numbers. > > So no, I'm not convinced we need this.
Adding TSC to the sample is a lot simpler and more accurate.
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