• Alok Kataria's avatar
    x86, tsc: Skip refined tsc calibration on systems with reliable TSC · 57779dc2
    Alok Kataria authored
    While running the latest Linux as guest under VMware in highly
    over-committed situations, we have seen cases when the refined TSC
    algorithm fails to get a valid tsc_start value in
    tsc_refine_calibration_work from multiple attempts. As a result the
    kernel keeps on scheduling the tsc_irqwork task for later. Subsequently
    after several attempts when it gets a valid start value it goes through
    the refined calibration and either bails out or uses the new results.
    Given that the kernel originally read the TSC frequency from the
    platform, which is the best it can get, I don't think there is much
    value in refining it.
    
    So  for systems which get the TSC frequency from the platform we
    should skip the refined tsc algorithm.
    
    We can use the TSC_RELIABLE cpu cap flag to detect this, right now it is
    set only on VMware and for Moorestown Penwell both of which have there
    own TSC calibration methods.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAlok N Kataria <akataria@vmware.com>
    Cc: John Stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>
    Cc: Dirk Brandewie <dirk.brandewie@gmail.com>
    Cc: Alan Cox <alan@linux.intel.com>
    Cc: stable@kernel.org
    [jstultz: Reworked to simply not schedule the refining work,
    rather then scheduling the work and bombing out later]
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJohn Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>
    57779dc2
tsc.c 26 KB