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Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 15:39:30 -0700
From: Jun Sun <jsun@mvista.com>
To: linux-mips@linux-mips.org
Cc: jsun@mvista.com
Subject: [RFC] synchronized CPU count registers on SMP machines
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There are many benefits of having perfectly synchronized CPU
count registers on SMP machines.

I wonder if this is something which have been done before,
and if this is feasible.

Apparently, this scheme won't work if any of the following
conditions are true:

1) clocks on different CPUs don't have the same frequency
2) clocks on different CPUs drift to each other
2) some fancy power saving feature such as frequency scaling

But I think for a foreseeable future most MIPS SMP machines
don't have the above issues (true?).  And it is probably worthwile
to synchronize count registers for them.

I think some pseudo code like the below could get the 
job done:

CPU 0:
	send interrupt to all other CPUs and ask them to sync count
	wait for all other CPUs to gather at rendevous point
	flip a flag
	set count to 0

other CPUs:
	trapped by IPI
	reach the rendevous point (busy spin locking)
	wait for the flip of the flag
	set count to 0

I wonder after the above code how synchronized are the count regsiters.
Are they perfectly synchronized or still differ by a few counts?

Any comments?

Jun