Re: [ANNOUNCE] high-res-timers patches for 2.6.6

[George Anzinger <george@mvista.com>]

Mark Gross wrote:
> On Monday 14 June 2004 13:48, George Anzinger wrote:
> 
>>Mark Gross wrote:
>>
>>>On Friday 11 June 2004 15:33, George Anzinger wrote:
>>>
>>>>I have been thinking of a major rewrite which would leave this code
>>>>alone, but would introduce an additional list and, of course, overhead
>>>>for high-res timers. This will take some time and be sub optimal, so I
>>>>wonder if it is needed.
>>>
>>>What would your goal for the major rewrite be?
>>>Redesign the implementation?
>>>Clean up / re-factor the current design?
>>>Add features?
>>
>>Mostly I would like to make it "clean" enough to get the community to
>>accept it. As I look at the current implemtation, the biggest intrusion
>>into the "normal" kernel is in the timer list area.  Thus, my thinking is
>>to introduce a second or slave list which would only be used by HR timers. 
>>This list would be "checked" by putting a "normal" i.e. add_timer, timer in
>>place to mark the jiffie that a HR timer was to expire in.  The "check"
>>code would then set up the HR interrupt to expire the timer.
>>
>>I am also considering removing a lot of the ifdefs one way or another. 
>>AND, I think I can make the whole thing configureable at boot time just as
>>the pm/TSC/etc. timers are.
>>
> 
> 
> Sounds good to me.  The higher level code can use this type of clean up.
> 
> 
>>>I've been wondering lately if a significant restructuring of the
>>>implementation could be done.  Something bottom's up that enabled
>>>changing / using different time bases without rebooting and coexisted
>>>nicely with HPET.
>>>
>>>Something along the lines of;
>>>* abstracting the time base's, calibration and computation of the next
>>>interrupt time into a polymorphic interface along with the implementation
>>>of a few of your time bases (ACPI, TSC) as a stand allown patch.
>>
>>Uh, is this something like the current TSC/ pmtimer/ HPET/ PIT selection
>>code in the x86?  Or do you have something else in mind here.  Given the
>>goal of integration with and inclusion in the kernel.org kernel, I don't
>>want to wander too far from what they are doing now.
>>
> 
> 
> Sort of but implemented with a dynamic binding as opposed to the current 
> compile time binding via ifdefs.
> 
> The current HRT code implements a kind of static / compile time polymorphism 
> that is hard for me to read and keep straight.  It implements N time bases, 
> with M interrupt sources for K architectures.  Implementing the binding logic 
> between all these at compile time leads to a lot of ifdefs and hard to grok 
> code.
> 
What the 2.6 x86 timer code does is to "try" different clocks until they find 
one that "accepts" the job.  A boot time option can override this to force a 
given clock, but all are compile in.  (By the way, the first machine I wrote 
code for had a total of 8K bytes, so I really don't like to waste memory :))

I started to do this with the latest patch but stopped when I realized that I 
would have to redo the conversion code.  Still, this isn't too hard and I may 
finish this conversion.  This would eliminate the pm/ TSC configure option AND 
allow the user to completly eliminate the HR (buy choosing a non-HR option at 
boot time), which, by the way, he can do now.
> 
> 
>>>* implement yet another polymorphic interface for the interrupt source
>>>used by the patch, along with a few interrupt sources (PIT, APIC, HPET
>>><-- new ) * Implement a simple RTC-like charactor driver using the above
>>>for testing and integration.
>>
>>I am not sure what wants to be done here.  I have to keep in mind that x86
>>is only one of many archs.  I would like to keep it as simple as possible
>>in this area.  See the include/linux/hrtime.h file for the arch interface
>>we are now using.
>>
> 
> 
> yes but the code in the include/linux/hrtime.h file exports zero abstractions 
> to the architecture independent kernel.  
> 
> Its mostly a documentation header file, that includes the architecture 
> dependent exports, that then need to be used by the architecture independent 
> code.  Its all wrapped up in macros and what not to make it work across a 
> handful of architectures but its still a significant CTAGS work out to follow 
> the logic.
> 
> I think that re-working the lower level HRT code to be more object based (like 
> pci and net devices for example) with a layered design would significantly 
> simplify the code and improve the extensibility across architectures and 
> platform hardware time based interrupt sources.

I haven't looked at pci or net stuff lately, but my attmept to export the 
conversion_bits structure was dissed by the arch folks, so I went for just what 
was needed.  Some of them don't export a conversion to micro seconds conversion, 
for example.  I welcome more details...

George
> 
> The only performance hit would be that some of the in-lined and compile time 
> macro code would no longer be inline-able.
> 
> --mgross
> 

-- 
George Anzinger   george@mvista.com
High-res-timers:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/high-res-timers/
Preemption patch: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rml