linux/kernel/time
john stultz a092ff0f90 time: Implement logarithmic time accumulation
Accumulating one tick at a time works well unless we're using NOHZ.
Then it can be an issue, since we may have to run through the loop
a few thousand times, which can increase timer interrupt caused
latency.

The current solution was to accumulate in half-second intervals
with NOHZ. This kept the number of loops down, however it did
slightly change how we make NTP adjustments. While not an issue
with NTPd users, as NTPd makes adjustments over a longer period of
time, other adjtimex() users have noticed the half-second
granularity with which we can apply frequency changes to the clock.

For instance, if a application tries to apply a 100ppm frequency
correction for 20ms to correct a 2us offset, with NOHZ they either
get no correction, or a 50us correction.

Now, there will always be some granularity error for applying
frequency corrections. However with users sensitive to this error
have seen a 50-500x increase with NOHZ compared to running without
NOHZ.

So I figured I'd try another approach then just simply increasing
the interval. My approach is to consume the time interval
logarithmically. This reduces the number of times through the loop
needed keeping latency down, while still preserving the original
granularity error for adjtimex() changes.

Further, this change allows us to remove the xtime_cache code
(patch to follow), as xtime is always within one tick of the
current time, instead of the half-second updates it saw before.

An earlier version of this patch has been shipping to x86 users in
the RedHat MRG releases for awhile without issue, but I've reworked
this version to be even more careful about avoiding possible
overflows if the shift value gets too large.

Signed-off-by: John Stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Reviewed-by: John Kacur <jkacur@redhat.com>
Cc: Clark Williams <williams@redhat.com>
Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
LKML-Reference: <1254525473.7741.88.camel@localhost.localdomain>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2009-10-05 13:51:48 +02:00
..
clockevents.c clockevent: Prevent dead lock on clockevents_lock 2009-08-19 18:15:10 +02:00
clocksource.c clocksource: Resume clocksource without taking the clocksource mutex 2009-09-24 22:37:53 +02:00
jiffies.c clocksource: Cleanup clocksource selection 2009-08-15 10:55:46 +02:00
Kconfig Kconfig: eliminate "def_bool n" constructs 2008-10-16 11:21:31 -07:00
Makefile time: add function to convert between calendar time and broken-down time for universal use 2009-09-24 07:20:56 -07:00
ntp.c timekeeping: Introduce timekeeping_leap_insert 2009-08-15 10:55:45 +02:00
tick-broadcast.c clockevent: Prevent dead lock on clockevents_lock 2009-08-19 18:15:10 +02:00
tick-common.c clockevents: prevent endless loop in tick_handle_periodic() 2009-05-02 10:22:27 +02:00
tick-internal.h NOHZ: restart tick device from irq_enter() 2008-10-17 18:13:38 +02:00
tick-oneshot.c clocksource: prevent selection of low resolution clocksourse also for nohz=on 2009-06-13 12:00:26 +02:00
tick-sched.c Merge branch 'timers-fixes-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip 2009-06-20 10:51:44 -07:00
timecompare.c timecompare: generic infrastructure to map between two time bases 2009-02-15 22:43:32 -08:00
timeconv.c time: add function to convert between calendar time and broken-down time for universal use 2009-09-24 07:20:56 -07:00
timekeeping.c time: Implement logarithmic time accumulation 2009-10-05 13:51:48 +02:00
timer_list.c const: constify remaining file_operations 2009-10-01 16:11:11 -07:00
timer_stats.c const: constify remaining file_operations 2009-10-01 16:11:11 -07:00