Architecture specific implementations for tickless kernel and deferrable timers

[linux@arm.linux.org.uk (Russell King - ARM Linux)]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 07:50:55PM +0530, Vikram Narayanan wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 8:43 AM, Jeff Ohlstein <johlstei@codeaurora.org> wrote:
> > Vikram Narayanan wrote:
> >> And also, are clocksoure and clockevents dependent on each other? I
> >> see in some platforms, that they have used 2 different timers for the
> >> above. Can a same clock be used for both clocksource and clockevents?
> >> Please throw some light on this. If it can be used so, what ties up
> >> the clocksource and clockevent?
> >
> > You can look at msm for an example of a single timer being used both as
> > a clocksource and a clockevent. We end up shutting off the clocksource
> > whenever we shut down the clockevent. This does cause some issues.
> > Switching clocksources at runtime does not work. It will also cause
> > problems if you implement your own sched_clock function, as it will have
> > little choice but to return a stale cached value whenever the clockevent
> > is disabled, such as in the suspend path.
> Thanks for the example. I will refer to that. And I have another
> question, If dynamic ticks are implemented, say if I am using the same
> clocksource and clockevent, the wall time will only be updated at that
> dyn_tick interval. Will that create any issue? or should I use a
> constant source for the clocksource? or how to handle this in an
> effective way.
> * Clocksource and clockevents with the same timer.
> * Also I want to make use of the tickless kernel functionality.

The only way to have a stable time source is to have a stable clocksource
- one which is never stopped or otherwise messed around with.  If you
try to combine clocksource and clockevent with one-shot mode, where
the clocksource part is reset each time a new event is set, you'll probably
soon end up with time going screwy.