tsc reliability for Intel Core 2 Duo "Conroe"

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From: Dan Magenheimer
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 - 10:41 am

Looking through code following up on the separate TSC-related
thread, I noticed that my Intel Core 2 Duo "Conroe" box
is determined to have an unstable TSC, so falls back
to clocksource==hpet.

While a Conroe has X86_FEATURE_CONSTANT_TSC and not
X86_FEATURE_NONSTOP_TSC, a Conroe is only able to enter
C0 and C1 (unlike its sister Intel Core 2 Duo processor
"Merom" which can enter C0-C3).

I was under the impression (possibly from an earlier kernel
version?) that tsc_constant PLUS inability to enter deep-C
states would result in an acceptably stable TSC to use
as a clocksource (assuming it passes a TSC warp test).

So is this a bug?  Or is my impression incorrect?

See tsc_check_state() in drivers/acpi/processor_idle.c.
I can submit a patch, but wanted to check first.
--

From: Venkatesh Pallipadi
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 - 3:21 pm

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Dan Magenheimer

Adding Len.

tsc_check_state(0 should only mark TSC unstable when state > C1 and
!NONSTOP_TSC. Are you seeing TSC marked even with only C1?

Or may be you are hitting the bug in acpi_pad.c that marks TSC
unstable more aggressively. I recently sent out a patch for that here
-
https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/100633/

Thanks,
Venki
--

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