netdev - Re: [PATCH net V4 2/2] igb: offer a PTP Hardware Clock instead of the timecompare method

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Message-ID: <20120327180501.GA3878@netboy.at.omicron.at>
Date:	Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:05:01 +0200
From:	Richard Cochran <richardcochran@...il.com>
To:	"Keller, Jacob E" <jacob.e.keller@...el.com>
Cc:	chetan loke <loke.chetan@...il.com>,
	"netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	"e1000-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net" 
	<e1000-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net>,
	"Kirsher, Jeffrey T" <jeffrey.t.kirsher@...el.com>,
	"Ronciak, John" <john.ronciak@...el.com>,
	"john.stultz@...aro.org" <john.stultz@...aro.org>,
	"tglx@...utronix.de" <tglx@...utronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net V4 2/2] igb: offer a PTP Hardware Clock instead of
 the timecompare method

Jacob,

Thanks for your detailed explanation...

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 08:46:13PM +0000, Keller, Jacob E wrote:
>
> The issue with gettime is in the SYSTIM registers. Gettime could also
> use cyc2time, and allow the background worktask to be the only one updating
> the timecounter's last read value. (this only has to happen at least twice
> every wraparound value, so for the 10gig 82599 about once every 30 seconds).
> But the lock is also protecting against corruption of the SYSTIM register
> reads. (The lock does 2 different things. We could add a separate lock,
> but I am not convinced it is worth it).

Right, the spinlock in my patch protects both the SYSTIM registers and
the struct timecounter. For the SYSTIM pair, you must use a
spinlock. There is no way around it.

The struct timecounter fields .cycle_last and .nsec are used as follows

   WRITE:   timercoutner_read()
            timercoutner_init()

   READ:    timercoutner_cyc2time()

Here you could conceivably use a reader/writer semaphore or a
seqlock. That would in turn enlarge the data structure and would
require nesting the locks.

I really doubt you will see any performance gain from such a
change. It increases code complexity and size for some dubious,
theoretical performance gain, for some really whacked use case.

Richard



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