linux-kernel - Re: MIPS TSC synchronization

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Date:	Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:55:20 -0500
From:	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>
To:	Ashwin Tanugula <ashwin.tanugula@...adcom.com>
Cc:	"ltt-dev@...ts.casi.polymtl.ca" <ltt-dev@...ts.casi.polymtl.ca>,
	Ralf Baechle <ralf@...ux-mips.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: MIPS TSC synchronization

* Ashwin Tanugula (ashwin.tanugula@...adcom.com) wrote:
>  
> 
> 
> > > However, I was only able to view two out of 10 traces generated.
> > > 
> 
> > These errors seem to be caused by the fact that you run a SMP mips system with frequency scaling (either dynamic freq. scaling., or halting the clock in idle).
> 
> > You might wait to try to disable the freq. scaling and see if it works better.
> 
> 
> Hi Mathieu,
> 
> 1)	With the patch on thop of 177, HAVE_UNSYNCHRONIZED_TSC was disabled and test_tsc_synchronization (arch/mips/kerne
> l/smp.c) was never called. So, we never knew if there was any TSC offset between the CPUs.

(adding Ralf and LKML in CC)

test_tsc_synchronization() is introduced by the LTTng tree. So in
mainline you would have never known that there was such a TSC offset
between your cores.

> 
> 
> 2)	With HAVE_UNSYNCHRONIZED_TSC enabled, TSC offset between the CPUs was  huge.
> 
> Boot messages:
> 
> checking TSC synchronization across all online CPUs:
> Measured 152179143 cycles TSC offset between CPUs, turning off TSC clock.
> 
> I think this happened because of the stub function for synchronise_count_master in arch/mips/include/asm/r4k-timer.h
> 
> 
> 3)	With HAVE_UNSYNCHRONIZED_TSC and enabled SYNC_R4K, arch/mips/kernel/sync-r4k.c gets compiled and I don't see any offset.
> 
> 
> Boot Messages:
> 
> checking TSC synchronization across all online CPUs: passed.
> 
> And I can view my traces on lttv without any problem.
> 

Great !

> 
> 
> I guess arch/mips/kernel/sync-r4k.c is buggy on SMTC.

I see that SYNC_R4K is only selected by MIPS_CMP usually. Maybe a select
for it should be added to your kind of board ?

> 
> 
> Can you please confirm if this is right or not?

Given I am not a MIPS expert, I added some people in CC. They might help
confirming this if you provide information about:

- Number of CPUs
- Threads per CPUs (seems to be one, given CONFIG_MIPS_MT_SMTC is not
  set in your configuration)
- your .config

Thanks,

Mathieu

> 
> Thanks,
> Ashwin
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
OpenPGP key fingerprint: 8CD5 52C3 8E3C 4140 715F  BA06 3F25 A8FE 3BAE 9A68
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