Re: Clock inaccuracy seen on NVIDIA nForce2 systems

From: Jesse Stockall
Date: Wed Oct 13 2004 - 16:12:40 EST


On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 16:30, Andy Currid wrote:
> A possible cause of this behavior is a clock synchronization issue that
> can arise on some nForce2 systems when interrupts are routed through the
> IOAPIC, and Spread Spectrum (SS) clocking is enabled. Under certain
> conditions, this can cause the IOAPIC to issue multiple interrupts to
> the CPU when it should have issued only one.
>
> If you are experiencing clock inaccuracy on nForce2 hardware, take the
> following steps to determine if this issue may be the cause:
>
> 1. Determine if the hardware you are using may be affected by this
> problem. The problem is limited to MCP2 and MCP2-T hardware; it does
> not affect MCP2-S or any nForce3 hardware. MCP2 and MCP2-T hardware
> may be identified by the PCI device ID of the ISA bridge, which is
> 0x0060 for these devices.
>
> To read the bridge device ID, use 'lspci -n -s 0:1.0' . The output
> should be of the form '0000:00:01.0 Class 0601: 10de:0060 (rev a3)'.
> The device ID of the bridge in this example is "0060" following the
> NVIDIA PCI vendor ID "10de".
>
> If your ISA bridge device ID is not 0x0060, then this issue is not
> the cause of any clock inaccuracy you are experiencing.

lspci -n -s 0:1.0

output: 0000:00:01.0 Class 0601: 10de:0060 (rev a3)

>
> 2. Otherwise, examine the output from 'cat /proc/interrupts'. If IRQ0
> (the timer) is shown to be in PIC mode rather than IOAPIC mode, then
> this issue is not the cause of any clock inaccuracy you are
> experiencing.
>

cat /proc/interrupts

output: 0: 179117760 IO-APIC-edge timer

> 3. Otherwise, reboot your system and enter BIOS SETUP. Check if your
> BIOS has a Front Side Bus (FSB) Spread Spectrum (SS) clocking option.
> On many systems, this option is located in the "Advanced Chipset
> Features" menu. If the option is present and enabled, disable it.
> Boot Linux and observe the system clock over several hours to verify
> if this has improved its accuracy.
>

Both Front Side Bus and AGP spread spectrum are disabled.

The system is running 2.6.9-rc4 and has been up for 2 days. I'm showing
an offset of -32 seconds and growing.

Jesse

--
Jesse Stockall <stockall@xxxxxxxx>

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