Re: AMD X2 unsynced TSC fix?

Andi Kleen
2006-10-28T09:52:00Z

On Friday 27 October 2006 23:46, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:35:24 -0700
>
> thockin@hockin.org wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 09:06:12PM -0700, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > > So far, has I can understand. Seems to me that my computer which have
> > > > a Pentium D (Dual Core) on VIA chipset, also have unsynchronized TSC
> > > > and with the patch of hrtimers on
> > >
> > > Intel systems (except for some large highend systems) have synchronized
> > > TSCs.
> >
> > Does Intel guarantee that, or is that just what we happen to see, so far.
>
> Matthias has a Xeon machine on which the TSCs are unsynced, and which are
> unsyncable - write_tsc() just doesn't do anything. See thread at
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/7/22/104

That is a clear BIOS bug (FSBs are programmed incorrectly) and doesn't seem to
be common. In fact the BIOS bug is so bad that it's surprising the system
works at all.

-Andi