Re: [PATCH] x86: hpet: Don't default CONFIG_HPET_TIMER to be y for X86_64

[Feng Tang <feng.tang@intel.com>]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 02:27:26PM -0700, John Stultz wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 12:52 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
> > On 03/27/2014 04:02 AM, Clemens Ladisch wrote:
> >> Feng Tang wrote:
> >> The help text still says:
> >> | You can safely choose Y here.  [...]
> >> | Choose N to continue using the legacy 8254 timer.
> >>
> >> Are these statements still true for those platforms?
> >
> > They aren't true for modern desktop and server platforms -- the TSC is
> > used regardless of hpet availability.
> 
> While I suspect the comment above is in relation to the non-apic
> timer. But with respect to timekeeping, our point is true assuming the
> TSC isn't mucked up by the BIOS.  My 1yr old i7-3930k single socket
> system still has some wonky BIOS bug that offsets the boot core's TSC.
> And that's intel's bios, so I can only imagine other vendors have
> found other ways to cause trouble.
> 
> So yea, the hpet availability for timekeeping is still important, as
> the TSC can still be problematic.

Yes, agreed. My patch only provides a way to disable HPET for some specific
platforms :)

Thanks,
Feng