linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 00/16] arm/arm64: Workaround misprogrammed CNTFRQ

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Message-ID: <c3c34b9b-3872-bbb1-28cf-07aa6c739e94@arm.com>
Date:   Mon, 24 Jul 2017 13:48:37 +0100
From:   Marc Zyngier <marc.zyngier@....com>
To:     Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>
Cc:     linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        Russell King <linux@...linux.org.uk>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@...aro.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/16] arm/arm64: Workaround misprogrammed CNTFRQ

On 24/07/17 13:19, Will Deacon wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 06:15:26PM +0100, Marc Zyngier wrote:
>> It is an unfortunate situation that CNTFRQ{,_EL0} is often
>> misprogrammed from the firmware side, leaving it up to the kernel to
>> work around it. This is usually done by providing an alternative
>> frequency in the Device Tree.
>>
>> Unfortunately, CNTFRQ is accessible from EL0, giving userspace the
>> wrong frequency, and potentially a different frequency per CPU, which
>> is definitely not what you want. A possible workaround is to trap this
>> into the kernel and to emulate it (together with the VDSO being
>> disabled), and this is what this series is achieving.
> 
> Which userspace is actually affected by a broken CNTFRQ register? I suspect
> most users will be more upset at losing their (perfectly functional) vDSO
> acceleration than they are about having a broken CNTFRQ value that is hardly
> ever used, especially since this affects quite a few systems.

OpenMPI is one of the things I'm aware of (we broke it when implementing
the first set of timer workarounds), and from trawling the Debian code
search, at least HHVM is another candidate. How this will affect them is
anybody's guess.

	M.
-- 
Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny...