linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 06/23 -v8] handle accurate time keeping over long delays

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Date:	Sat, 2 Feb 2008 02:11:41 -0500 (EST)
From:	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
To:	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>
cc:	John Stultz <johnstul@...ibm.com>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
	Gregory Haskins <ghaskins@...ell.com>,
	Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@...stprotocols.net>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Tim Bird <tim.bird@...sony.com>,
	Sam Ravnborg <sam@...nborg.org>,
	"Frank Ch. Eigler" <fche@...hat.com>,
	Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@...mens.com>,
	Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...radead.org>,
	Steven Rostedt <srostedt@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 06/23 -v8] handle accurate time keeping over long delays




On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:

> > > > accumulated clock cycles.
> > > >
> > >
> > > About this one.. we talked a lot about the importance of timekeeping at
> > > the first Montreal Tracing Summit this week. Actually, someone
> > > mentioned a very interesting point : in order to be able to synchronize
> > > traces taken from the machine with traces taken on external hardware
> > > (i.e. memory bus tracer on Freescale), taking the "real" counter value
> > > rather that using the "cumulated cycles" approach (which creates a
> > > virtual counted instead) would be better.
> > >
> > > So I would recommend using an algorithm that would return a clock value
> > > which is the same as the underlying hardware counter.
> >
> > Hmm. It is an interesting issue. Clearly having the raw cycle value
> > match up so hardware analysis could be mapped to software timestamps
> > would be useful(although obscure) feature. However with the variety of
> > clocksources, dealing properly with the clocksource wrap issue (ACPI PM
> > for instance wraps about every 5 seconds) also has to be addressed.
> >
> > I think you were mentioning an idea that required some work on the read
> > side to handle the wraps, basically managing the high order bits by
> > hand. This sounds like it would be an additional feature that could be
> > added on to the infrastructure being provided in the
> > get_monotonic_cycles() patch. No?
> >
>
> Yup, exactly.
>
> >
> > However, all of the above is a separate issue then what this (the
> > timekeeping over long delay) patch addresses, as it is not really
> > directly related to the get_monotonic_cycles() patch, but instead allows
> > for correct timekeeping, making update_wall_time() to function properly
> > if it was deferred for longer then the clocksource's wrap time.
> >
>
> I agree, that could apply on top of the monotonic cycles patch. It's
> just a different way to see it : dealing with wrapping TSC bits,
> returning the LSBs given by the hardware, rather than simply
> accumulating time. This is what the patch I sent earlier (which I use in
> LTTng) does. I currently expects 32 LSBs to be given by the hardware,
> but it would be trivial to extend it to support any given number of
> hardware LSBs.
>

So you are saying that you can trivally make it work with a clock that is,
say 24 bits? And this same code can work if we boot up with a clock with
32 bits or more?

-- Steve

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