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.
and hide it inside of atrtc driver. Add new tunable hint.atrtc.0.clock
controlling it. Setting it to 0 disables using RTC clock as stat-/
profclock sources.
Teach i386 and amd64 SMP platforms to emulate stat-/profclocks using i8254
hardclock, when LAPIC and RTC clocks are disabled.
This allows to reduce global interrupt rate of idle system down to about
100 interrupts per core, permitting C3 and deeper C-states provide maximum
CPU power efficiency.
This will make a number of things easier in the future, as well as (finally!)
avoiding the Id-smashing problem which has plagued developers for so long.
Boy, I'm glad we're not using sup anymore. This update would have been
insane otherwise.
not provide the full accuracy of a randomized statistical clock, it does
provide greater accuracy than the previous method, while not significantly
increasing overhead. It also provides profiling support at 1024 Hz.
You must re-compile config before making a new kernel, or you will end
up with unresolved symbols.
Reviewed uy: Bruce evans said it worked for him.
