linux-kernel - [patch 0/8] x86/tsc: Utilize TSC

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Date:   Sat, 19 Nov 2016 13:47:32 -0000
From:   Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
To:     LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Cc:     Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>, x86@...nel.org,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, Yinghai Lu <yinghai@...nel.org>
Subject: [patch 0/8] x86/tsc: Utilize TSC_ADJUST MSR

The TSC_ADJUST MSR shows whether the TSC has been modified. This is helpful
in two aspects:

1) It allows to detect BIOS wreckage, where SMM code tries to 'hide' the
   cycles spent by storing the TSC value at SMM entry and restoring it at
   SMM exit. On affected machines the TSCs run slowly out of sync up to the
   point where the clocksource watchdog (if available) detects it.

   The TSC_ADJUST MSR allows to detect the TSC modification before that and
   eventually restore it. This is also important for SoCs which have no
   watchdog clocksource and therefore TSC wreckage cannot be detected and
   acted upon.

2) All threads in a package are required to have the same TSC_ADJUST
   value. Broken BIOSes break that and as a result the TSC synchronization
   check fails.

   The TSC_ADJUST MSR allows to detect the deviation when a CPU comes
   online. If detected set it to the value of an already online CPU in the
   same package. This also allows to reduce the number of sync tests
   because with that in place the test is only required for the first CPU
   in a package.

   In principle all CPUs in a system should have the same TSC_ADJUST value
   even across packages, but with physical CPU hotplug this assumption is
   not true because the TSC starts with power on, so physical hotplug has
   to do some trickery to bring the TSC into sync with already running
   packages, which requires to use an TSC_ADJUST value different from CPUs
   which got powered earlier.

   A final enhancement is the opportunity to compensate for unsynced TSCs
   accross nodes at boot time and make the TSC usable that way. It won't
   help for TSCs which run apart due to frequency skew between packages,
   but this gets detected by the clocksource watchdog later.

This patch series implements all of the avove.

Thanks,

	tglx

---
 include/asm/tsc.h |    8 +
 kernel/Makefile   |    2 
 kernel/process.c  |    1 
 kernel/tsc.c      |   16 ++-
 kernel/tsc_sync.c |  237 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
 5 files changed, 244 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-)