Right now, userspace (fast) gettimeofday(2) on x86 only works for
RDTSC. For older machines, like Core2, where RDTSC is not C2/C3
invariant, and which fall to HPET hardware, this means that the call
has both the penalty of the syscall and of the uncached hw behind the
QPI or PCIe connection to the sought bridge. Nothing can me done
against the access latency, but the syscall overhead can be removed.
System already provides mappable /dev/hpetX devices, which gives
straight access to the HPET registers page.
Add yet another algorithm to the x86 'vdso' timehands. Libc is updated
to handle both RDTSC and HPET. For HPET, the index of the hpet device
to mmap is passed from kernel to userspace, index might be changed and
libc invalidates its mapping as needed.
Remove cpu_fill_vdso_timehands() KPI, instead require that
timecounters which can be used from userspace, to provide
tc_fill_vdso_timehands{,32}() methods. Merge i386 and amd64
libc/<arch>/sys/__vdso_gettc.c into one source file in the new
libc/x86/sys location. __vdso_gettc() internal interface is changed
to move timecounter algorithm detection into the MD code.
Measurements show that RDTSC even with the syscall overhead is faster
than userspace HPET access. But still, userspace HPET is three-four
times faster than syscall HPET on several Core2 and SandyBridge
machines.
Tested by: Howard Su <howard0su@gmail.com>
Sponsored by: The FreeBSD Foundation
MFC after: 1 month
Differential revision: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D7473
avoid lost timer interrupts. Previous optimization attempt doing it only
for intervals less then 5000 ticks (~300us) reported to be unreliable by
some people. Probably because of some heavy SMI code on their boards.
Introduce additional safety interval of 128 counter ticks (~9us) between
programmed comparator and counter values to cover different cases of
delayed write found on some chipsets.
Approved by: re (kib)
writing event timer drivers, for choosing best possible drivers by machine
independent code and for operating them to supply kernel with hardclock(),
statclock() and profclock() events in unified fashion on various hardware.
Infrastructure provides support for both per-CPU (independent for every CPU
core) and global timers in periodic and one-shot modes. MI management code
at this moment uses only periodic mode, but one-shot mode use planned for
later, as part of tickless kernel project.
For this moment infrastructure used on i386 and amd64 architectures. Other
archs are welcome to follow, while their current operation should not be
affected.
This patch updates existing drivers (i8254, RTC and LAPIC) for the new
order, and adds event timers support into the HPET driver. These drivers
have different capabilities:
LAPIC - per-CPU timer, supports periodic and one-shot operation, may
freeze in C3 state, calibrated on first use, so may be not exactly precise.
HPET - depending on hardware can work as per-CPU or global, supports
periodic and one-shot operation, usually provides several event timers.
i8254 - global, limited to periodic mode, because same hardware used also
as time counter.
RTC - global, supports only periodic mode, set of frequencies in Hz
limited by powers of 2.
Depending on hardware capabilities, drivers preferred in following orders,
either LAPIC, HPETs, i8254, RTC or HPETs, LAPIC, i8254, RTC.
User may explicitly specify wanted timers via loader tunables or sysctls:
kern.eventtimer.timer1 and kern.eventtimer.timer2.
If requested driver is unavailable or unoperational, system will try to
replace it. If no more timers available or "NONE" specified for second,
system will operate using only one timer, multiplying it's frequency by few
times and uing respective dividers to honor hz, stathz and profhz values,
set during initial setup.
