Re: [PATCH] x86 (64): make calibrate_APIC_clock() smp-safe

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Thu Jul 24 2008 - 09:32:27 EST


Martin Wilck wrote:
Hi Thomas and Peter, hi everyone,

Asynchrounous events (e.g.SMIs) which occur during the APIC timer calibration can cause timer miscalibrations, sometimes by large amounts.

This patch fixes this by two separate measures:
a) make sure that no significant interruption occurs between APIC and
TSC reads
b) make sure that the measurement loop isn't significantly longer
than originally intended.

I am sorry, due to a misconfiguration of our SMTP server I need to send the patch as attachment.


The other thing we may want to consider is doing multiple runs of the calibration loop. I suspect we'd get a more accurate result running, say, 9 loops of the 1/9 the current duration and looking either for the best result or the median (NOT the mean.)

-hpa

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