<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>linux-toradex.git/kernel/timer.c, branch v2.6.36.4</title>
<subtitle>Linux kernel for Apalis and Colibri modules</subtitle>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/'/>
<entry>
<title>sched: Cure more NO_HZ load average woes</title>
<updated>2011-01-07T21:58:31+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Peter Zijlstra</name>
<email>a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl</email>
</author>
<published>2010-11-30T18:48:45+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=2ebd26f64ae7c6f86277b0cffb7a38cddabfed2f'/>
<id>2ebd26f64ae7c6f86277b0cffb7a38cddabfed2f</id>
<content type='text'>
commit 0f004f5a696a9434b7214d0d3cbd0525ee77d428 upstream.

There's a long-running regression that proved difficult to fix and
which is hitting certain people and is rather annoying in its effects.

Damien reported that after 74f5187ac8 (sched: Cure load average vs
NO_HZ woes) his load average is unnaturally high, he also noted that
even with that patch reverted the load avgerage numbers are not
correct.

The problem is that the previous patch only solved half the NO_HZ
problem, it addressed the part of going into NO_HZ mode, not of
comming out of NO_HZ mode. This patch implements that missing half.

When comming out of NO_HZ mode there are two important things to take
care of:

 - Folding the pending idle delta into the global active count.
 - Correctly aging the averages for the idle-duration.

So with this patch the NO_HZ interaction should be complete and
behaviour between CONFIG_NO_HZ=[yn] should be equivalent.

Furthermore, this patch slightly changes the load average computation
by adding a rounding term to the fixed point multiplication.

Reported-by: Damien Wyart &lt;damien.wyart@free.fr&gt;
Reported-by: Tim McGrath &lt;tmhikaru@gmail.com&gt;
Tested-by: Damien Wyart &lt;damien.wyart@free.fr&gt;
Tested-by: Orion Poplawski &lt;orion@cora.nwra.com&gt;
Tested-by: Kyle McMartin &lt;kyle@mcmartin.ca&gt;
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra &lt;a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl&gt;
Cc: Chase Douglas &lt;chase.douglas@canonical.com&gt;
LKML-Reference: &lt;1291129145.32004.874.camel@laptop&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@suse.de&gt;

</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
commit 0f004f5a696a9434b7214d0d3cbd0525ee77d428 upstream.

There's a long-running regression that proved difficult to fix and
which is hitting certain people and is rather annoying in its effects.

Damien reported that after 74f5187ac8 (sched: Cure load average vs
NO_HZ woes) his load average is unnaturally high, he also noted that
even with that patch reverted the load avgerage numbers are not
correct.

The problem is that the previous patch only solved half the NO_HZ
problem, it addressed the part of going into NO_HZ mode, not of
comming out of NO_HZ mode. This patch implements that missing half.

When comming out of NO_HZ mode there are two important things to take
care of:

 - Folding the pending idle delta into the global active count.
 - Correctly aging the averages for the idle-duration.

So with this patch the NO_HZ interaction should be complete and
behaviour between CONFIG_NO_HZ=[yn] should be equivalent.

Furthermore, this patch slightly changes the load average computation
by adding a rounding term to the fixed point multiplication.

Reported-by: Damien Wyart &lt;damien.wyart@free.fr&gt;
Reported-by: Tim McGrath &lt;tmhikaru@gmail.com&gt;
Tested-by: Damien Wyart &lt;damien.wyart@free.fr&gt;
Tested-by: Orion Poplawski &lt;orion@cora.nwra.com&gt;
Tested-by: Kyle McMartin &lt;kyle@mcmartin.ca&gt;
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra &lt;a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl&gt;
Cc: Chase Douglas &lt;chase.douglas@canonical.com&gt;
LKML-Reference: &lt;1291129145.32004.874.camel@laptop&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@suse.de&gt;

</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>nohz: Fix get_next_timer_interrupt() vs cpu hotplug</title>
<updated>2011-01-07T21:58:15+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Heiko Carstens</name>
<email>heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com</email>
</author>
<published>2010-12-01T09:11:09+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=de25afbd8ac1f4fad6dec0caa9ab4e4eb6037a8a'/>
<id>de25afbd8ac1f4fad6dec0caa9ab4e4eb6037a8a</id>
<content type='text'>
commit dbd87b5af055a0cc9bba17795c9a2b0d17795389 upstream.

This fixes a bug as seen on 2.6.32 based kernels where timers got
enqueued on offline cpus.

If a cpu goes offline it might still have pending timers. These will
be migrated during CPU_DEAD handling after the cpu is offline.
However while the cpu is going offline it will schedule the idle task
which will then call tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick().

That function in turn will call get_next_timer_intterupt() to figure
out if the tick of the cpu can be stopped or not. If it turns out that
the next tick is just one jiffy off (delta_jiffies == 1)
tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick() incorrectly assumes that the tick should
not stop and takes an early exit and thus it won't update the load
balancer cpu.

Just afterwards the cpu will be killed and the load balancer cpu could
be the offline cpu.

On 2.6.32 based kernel get_nohz_load_balancer() gets called to decide
on which cpu a timer should be enqueued (see __mod_timer()). Which
leads to the possibility that timers get enqueued on an offline cpu.
These will never expire and can cause a system hang.

This has been observed 2.6.32 kernels. On current kernels
__mod_timer() uses get_nohz_timer_target() which doesn't have that
problem. However there might be other problems because of the too
early exit tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick() in case a cpu goes offline.

The easiest and probably safest fix seems to be to let
get_next_timer_interrupt() just lie and let it say there isn't any
pending timer if the current cpu is offline.

I also thought of moving migrate_[hr]timers() from CPU_DEAD to
CPU_DYING, but seeing that there already have been fixes at least in
the hrtimer code in this area I'm afraid that this could add new
subtle bugs.

Signed-off-by: Heiko Carstens &lt;heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra &lt;a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl&gt;
LKML-Reference: &lt;20101201091109.GA8984@osiris.boeblingen.de.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@suse.de&gt;

</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
commit dbd87b5af055a0cc9bba17795c9a2b0d17795389 upstream.

This fixes a bug as seen on 2.6.32 based kernels where timers got
enqueued on offline cpus.

If a cpu goes offline it might still have pending timers. These will
be migrated during CPU_DEAD handling after the cpu is offline.
However while the cpu is going offline it will schedule the idle task
which will then call tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick().

That function in turn will call get_next_timer_intterupt() to figure
out if the tick of the cpu can be stopped or not. If it turns out that
the next tick is just one jiffy off (delta_jiffies == 1)
tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick() incorrectly assumes that the tick should
not stop and takes an early exit and thus it won't update the load
balancer cpu.

Just afterwards the cpu will be killed and the load balancer cpu could
be the offline cpu.

On 2.6.32 based kernel get_nohz_load_balancer() gets called to decide
on which cpu a timer should be enqueued (see __mod_timer()). Which
leads to the possibility that timers get enqueued on an offline cpu.
These will never expire and can cause a system hang.

This has been observed 2.6.32 kernels. On current kernels
__mod_timer() uses get_nohz_timer_target() which doesn't have that
problem. However there might be other problems because of the too
early exit tick_nohz_stop_sched_tick() in case a cpu goes offline.

The easiest and probably safest fix seems to be to let
get_next_timer_interrupt() just lie and let it say there isn't any
pending timer if the current cpu is offline.

I also thought of moving migrate_[hr]timers() from CPU_DEAD to
CPU_DYING, but seeing that there already have been fixes at least in
the hrtimer code in this area I'm afraid that this could add new
subtle bugs.

Signed-off-by: Heiko Carstens &lt;heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra &lt;a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl&gt;
LKML-Reference: &lt;20101201091109.GA8984@osiris.boeblingen.de.ibm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@suse.de&gt;

</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>kernel/timer.c: fix kernel-doc function parameter warning</title>
<updated>2010-08-10T22:33:09+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Randy Dunlap</name>
<email>randy.dunlap@oracle.com</email>
</author>
<published>2010-08-09T23:32:50+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=0caa621065b2cc05d4e53655a34fd989f500b040'/>
<id>0caa621065b2cc05d4e53655a34fd989f500b040</id>
<content type='text'>
Fix kernel-doc warning, add @timer description:

  Warning(kernel/timer.c:335): No description found for parameter 'timer'

Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap &lt;randy.dunlap@oracle.com&gt;
Cc: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Fix kernel-doc warning, add @timer description:

  Warning(kernel/timer.c:335): No description found for parameter 'timer'

Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap &lt;randy.dunlap@oracle.com&gt;
Cc: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branch 'timers-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip</title>
<updated>2010-08-06T20:12:36+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2010-08-06T20:12:36+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=af390084359a5de20046c901529b2b6a50b941cb'/>
<id>af390084359a5de20046c901529b2b6a50b941cb</id>
<content type='text'>
* 'timers-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip:
  Documentation: Add timers/timers-howto.txt
  timer: Added usleep_range timer
  Revert "timer: Added usleep[_range] timer"
  clockevents: Remove the per cpu tick skew
  posix_timer: Move copy_to_user(created_timer_id) down in timer_create()
  timer: Added usleep[_range] timer
  timers: Document meaning of deferrable timer
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
* 'timers-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip:
  Documentation: Add timers/timers-howto.txt
  timer: Added usleep_range timer
  Revert "timer: Added usleep[_range] timer"
  clockevents: Remove the per cpu tick skew
  posix_timer: Move copy_to_user(created_timer_id) down in timer_create()
  timer: Added usleep[_range] timer
  timers: Document meaning of deferrable timer
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branch 'sched-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip</title>
<updated>2010-08-06T16:39:22+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2010-08-06T16:39:22+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=c4efd6b569b2646e1346a08a4c40286f8bcb5f11'/>
<id>c4efd6b569b2646e1346a08a4c40286f8bcb5f11</id>
<content type='text'>
* 'sched-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip: (27 commits)
  sched: Use correct macro to display sched_child_runs_first in /proc/sched_debug
  sched: No need for bootmem special cases
  sched: Revert nohz_ratelimit() for now
  sched: Reduce update_group_power() calls
  sched: Update rq-&gt;clock for nohz balanced cpus
  sched: Fix spelling of sibling
  sched, cpuset: Drop __cpuexit from cpu hotplug callbacks
  sched: Fix the racy usage of thread_group_cputimer() in fastpath_timer_check()
  sched: run_posix_cpu_timers: Don't check -&gt;exit_state, use lock_task_sighand()
  sched: thread_group_cputime: Simplify, document the "alive" check
  sched: Remove the obsolete exit_state/signal hacks
  sched: task_tick_rt: Remove the obsolete -&gt;signal != NULL check
  sched: __sched_setscheduler: Read the RLIMIT_RTPRIO value lockless
  sched: Fix comments to make them DocBook happy
  sched: Fix fix_small_capacity
  powerpc: Exclude arch_sd_sibiling_asym_packing() on UP
  powerpc: Enable asymmetric SMT scheduling on POWER7
  sched: Add asymmetric group packing option for sibling domain
  sched: Fix capacity calculations for SMT4
  sched: Change nohz idle load balancing logic to push model
  ...
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
* 'sched-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip: (27 commits)
  sched: Use correct macro to display sched_child_runs_first in /proc/sched_debug
  sched: No need for bootmem special cases
  sched: Revert nohz_ratelimit() for now
  sched: Reduce update_group_power() calls
  sched: Update rq-&gt;clock for nohz balanced cpus
  sched: Fix spelling of sibling
  sched, cpuset: Drop __cpuexit from cpu hotplug callbacks
  sched: Fix the racy usage of thread_group_cputimer() in fastpath_timer_check()
  sched: run_posix_cpu_timers: Don't check -&gt;exit_state, use lock_task_sighand()
  sched: thread_group_cputime: Simplify, document the "alive" check
  sched: Remove the obsolete exit_state/signal hacks
  sched: task_tick_rt: Remove the obsolete -&gt;signal != NULL check
  sched: __sched_setscheduler: Read the RLIMIT_RTPRIO value lockless
  sched: Fix comments to make them DocBook happy
  sched: Fix fix_small_capacity
  powerpc: Exclude arch_sd_sibiling_asym_packing() on UP
  powerpc: Enable asymmetric SMT scheduling on POWER7
  sched: Add asymmetric group packing option for sibling domain
  sched: Fix capacity calculations for SMT4
  sched: Change nohz idle load balancing logic to push model
  ...
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branch 'perf-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip</title>
<updated>2010-08-06T16:30:52+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2010-08-06T16:30:52+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=4aed2fd8e3181fea7c09ba79cf64e7e3f4413bf9'/>
<id>4aed2fd8e3181fea7c09ba79cf64e7e3f4413bf9</id>
<content type='text'>
* 'perf-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip: (162 commits)
  tracing/kprobes: unregister_trace_probe needs to be called under mutex
  perf: expose event__process function
  perf events: Fix mmap offset determination
  perf, powerpc: fsl_emb: Restore setting perf_sample_data.period
  perf, powerpc: Convert the FSL driver to use local64_t
  perf tools: Don't keep unreferenced maps when unmaps are detected
  perf session: Invalidate last_match when removing threads from rb_tree
  perf session: Free the ref_reloc_sym memory at the right place
  x86,mmiotrace: Add support for tracing STOS instruction
  perf, sched migration: Librarize task states and event headers helpers
  perf, sched migration: Librarize the GUI class
  perf, sched migration: Make the GUI class client agnostic
  perf, sched migration: Make it vertically scrollable
  perf, sched migration: Parameterize cpu height and spacing
  perf, sched migration: Fix key bindings
  perf, sched migration: Ignore unhandled task states
  perf, sched migration: Handle ignored migrate out events
  perf: New migration tool overview
  tracing: Drop cpparg() macro
  perf: Use tracepoint_synchronize_unregister() to flush any pending tracepoint call
  ...

Fix up trivial conflicts in Makefile and drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
* 'perf-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip: (162 commits)
  tracing/kprobes: unregister_trace_probe needs to be called under mutex
  perf: expose event__process function
  perf events: Fix mmap offset determination
  perf, powerpc: fsl_emb: Restore setting perf_sample_data.period
  perf, powerpc: Convert the FSL driver to use local64_t
  perf tools: Don't keep unreferenced maps when unmaps are detected
  perf session: Invalidate last_match when removing threads from rb_tree
  perf session: Free the ref_reloc_sym memory at the right place
  x86,mmiotrace: Add support for tracing STOS instruction
  perf, sched migration: Librarize task states and event headers helpers
  perf, sched migration: Librarize the GUI class
  perf, sched migration: Make the GUI class client agnostic
  perf, sched migration: Make it vertically scrollable
  perf, sched migration: Parameterize cpu height and spacing
  perf, sched migration: Fix key bindings
  perf, sched migration: Ignore unhandled task states
  perf, sched migration: Handle ignored migrate out events
  perf: New migration tool overview
  tracing: Drop cpparg() macro
  perf: Use tracepoint_synchronize_unregister() to flush any pending tracepoint call
  ...

Fix up trivial conflicts in Makefile and drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branch 'perf/nmi' into perf/core</title>
<updated>2010-08-05T06:45:05+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Ingo Molnar</name>
<email>mingo@elte.hu</email>
</author>
<published>2010-08-05T06:45:05+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=61be7fdec2f51b99570cd5dcc30c7848c8e56513'/>
<id>61be7fdec2f51b99570cd5dcc30c7848c8e56513</id>
<content type='text'>
Conflicts:
	kernel/Makefile

Merge reason: Add the now complete topic, fix the conflict.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Conflicts:
	kernel/Makefile

Merge reason: Add the now complete topic, fix the conflict.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>timer: Added usleep_range timer</title>
<updated>2010-08-04T09:00:45+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Patrick Pannuto</name>
<email>ppannuto@codeaurora.org</email>
</author>
<published>2010-08-02T22:01:04+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=5e7f5a178bba45c5aca3448fddecabd4e28f1f6b'/>
<id>5e7f5a178bba45c5aca3448fddecabd4e28f1f6b</id>
<content type='text'>
usleep_range is a finer precision implementations of msleep
and is designed to be a drop-in replacement for udelay where
a precise sleep / busy-wait is unnecessary.

Since an easy interface to hrtimers could lead to an undesired
proliferation of interrupts, we provide only a "range" API,
forcing the caller to think about an acceptable tolerance on
both ends and hopefully avoiding introducing another interrupt.

INTRO

As discussed here ( http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/3/250 ), msleep(1) is not
precise enough for many drivers (yes, sleep precision is an unfair notion,
but consistently sleeping for ~an order of magnitude greater than requested
is worth fixing). This patch adds a usleep API so that udelay does not have
to be used. Obviously not every udelay can be replaced (those in atomic
contexts or being used for simple bitbanging come to mind), but there are
many, many examples of

mydriver_write(...)
/* Wait for hardware to latch */
udelay(100)

in various drivers where a busy-wait loop is neither beneficial nor
necessary, but msleep simply does not provide enough precision and people
are using a busy-wait loop instead.

CONCERNS FROM THE RFC

Why is udelay a problem / necessary? Most callers of udelay are in device/
driver initialization code, which is serial...

	As I see it, there is only benefit to sleeping over a delay; the
	notion of "refactoring" areas that use udelay was presented, but
	I see usleep as the refactoring. Consider i2c, if the bus is busy,
	you need to wait a bit (say 100us) before trying again, your
	current options are:

		* udelay(100)
		* msleep(1) &lt;-- As noted above, actually as high as ~20ms
				on some platforms, so not really an option
		* Manually set up an hrtimer to try again in 100us (which
		  is what usleep does anyway...)

	People choose the udelay route because it is EASY; we need to
	provide a better easy route.

	Device / driver / boot code is *currently* serial, but every few
	months someone makes noise about parallelizing boot, and IMHO, a
	little forward-thinking now is one less thing to worry about
	if/when that ever happens

udelay's could be preempted

	Sure, but if udelay plans on looping 1000 times, and it gets
	preempted on loop 200, whenever it's scheduled again, it is
	going to do the next 800 loops.

Is the interruptible case needed?

	Probably not, but I see usleep as a very logical parallel to msleep,
	so it made sense to include the "full" API. Processors are getting
	faster (albeit not as quickly as they are becoming more parallel),
	so if someone wanted to be interruptible for a few usecs, why not
	let them? If this is a contentious point, I'm happy to remove it.

OTHER THOUGHTS

I believe there is also value in exposing the usleep_range option; it gives
the scheduler a lot more flexibility and allows the programmer to express
his intent much more clearly; it's something I would hope future driver
writers will take advantage of.

To get the results in the NUMBERS section below, I literally s/udelay/usleep
the kernel tree; I had to go in and undo the changes to the USB drivers, but
everything else booted successfully; I find that extremely telling in and
of itself -- many people are using a delay API where a sleep will suit them
just fine.

SOME ATTEMPTS AT NUMBERS

It turns out that calculating quantifiable benefit on this is challenging,
so instead I will simply present the current state of things, and I hope
this to be sufficient:

How many udelay calls are there in 2.6.35-rc5?

	udealy(ARG) &gt;=	| COUNT
	1000		| 319
	500		| 414
	100		| 1146
	20		| 1832

I am working on Android, so that is my focus for this. The following table
is a modified usleep that simply printk's the amount of time requested to
sleep; these tests were run on a kernel with udelay &gt;= 20 --&gt; usleep

"boot" is power-on to lock screen
"power collapse" is when the power button is pushed and the device suspends
"resume" is when the power button is pushed and the lock screen is displayed
         (no touchscreen events or anything, just turning on the display)
"use device" is from the unlock swipe to clicking around a bit; there is no
	sd card in this phone, so fail loading music, video, camera

	ACTION		| TOTAL NUMBER OF USLEEP CALLS	| NET TIME (us)
	boot		| 22				| 1250
	power-collapse	| 9				| 1200
	resume		| 5				| 500
	use device	| 59				| 7700

The most interesting category to me is the "use device" field; 7700us of
busy-wait time that could be put towards better responsiveness, or at the
least less power usage.

Signed-off-by: Patrick Pannuto &lt;ppannuto@codeaurora.org&gt;
Cc: apw@canonical.com
Cc: corbet@lwn.net
Cc: arjan@linux.intel.com
Cc: Randy Dunlap &lt;rdunlap@xenotime.net&gt;
Cc: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
usleep_range is a finer precision implementations of msleep
and is designed to be a drop-in replacement for udelay where
a precise sleep / busy-wait is unnecessary.

Since an easy interface to hrtimers could lead to an undesired
proliferation of interrupts, we provide only a "range" API,
forcing the caller to think about an acceptable tolerance on
both ends and hopefully avoiding introducing another interrupt.

INTRO

As discussed here ( http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/3/250 ), msleep(1) is not
precise enough for many drivers (yes, sleep precision is an unfair notion,
but consistently sleeping for ~an order of magnitude greater than requested
is worth fixing). This patch adds a usleep API so that udelay does not have
to be used. Obviously not every udelay can be replaced (those in atomic
contexts or being used for simple bitbanging come to mind), but there are
many, many examples of

mydriver_write(...)
/* Wait for hardware to latch */
udelay(100)

in various drivers where a busy-wait loop is neither beneficial nor
necessary, but msleep simply does not provide enough precision and people
are using a busy-wait loop instead.

CONCERNS FROM THE RFC

Why is udelay a problem / necessary? Most callers of udelay are in device/
driver initialization code, which is serial...

	As I see it, there is only benefit to sleeping over a delay; the
	notion of "refactoring" areas that use udelay was presented, but
	I see usleep as the refactoring. Consider i2c, if the bus is busy,
	you need to wait a bit (say 100us) before trying again, your
	current options are:

		* udelay(100)
		* msleep(1) &lt;-- As noted above, actually as high as ~20ms
				on some platforms, so not really an option
		* Manually set up an hrtimer to try again in 100us (which
		  is what usleep does anyway...)

	People choose the udelay route because it is EASY; we need to
	provide a better easy route.

	Device / driver / boot code is *currently* serial, but every few
	months someone makes noise about parallelizing boot, and IMHO, a
	little forward-thinking now is one less thing to worry about
	if/when that ever happens

udelay's could be preempted

	Sure, but if udelay plans on looping 1000 times, and it gets
	preempted on loop 200, whenever it's scheduled again, it is
	going to do the next 800 loops.

Is the interruptible case needed?

	Probably not, but I see usleep as a very logical parallel to msleep,
	so it made sense to include the "full" API. Processors are getting
	faster (albeit not as quickly as they are becoming more parallel),
	so if someone wanted to be interruptible for a few usecs, why not
	let them? If this is a contentious point, I'm happy to remove it.

OTHER THOUGHTS

I believe there is also value in exposing the usleep_range option; it gives
the scheduler a lot more flexibility and allows the programmer to express
his intent much more clearly; it's something I would hope future driver
writers will take advantage of.

To get the results in the NUMBERS section below, I literally s/udelay/usleep
the kernel tree; I had to go in and undo the changes to the USB drivers, but
everything else booted successfully; I find that extremely telling in and
of itself -- many people are using a delay API where a sleep will suit them
just fine.

SOME ATTEMPTS AT NUMBERS

It turns out that calculating quantifiable benefit on this is challenging,
so instead I will simply present the current state of things, and I hope
this to be sufficient:

How many udelay calls are there in 2.6.35-rc5?

	udealy(ARG) &gt;=	| COUNT
	1000		| 319
	500		| 414
	100		| 1146
	20		| 1832

I am working on Android, so that is my focus for this. The following table
is a modified usleep that simply printk's the amount of time requested to
sleep; these tests were run on a kernel with udelay &gt;= 20 --&gt; usleep

"boot" is power-on to lock screen
"power collapse" is when the power button is pushed and the device suspends
"resume" is when the power button is pushed and the lock screen is displayed
         (no touchscreen events or anything, just turning on the display)
"use device" is from the unlock swipe to clicking around a bit; there is no
	sd card in this phone, so fail loading music, video, camera

	ACTION		| TOTAL NUMBER OF USLEEP CALLS	| NET TIME (us)
	boot		| 22				| 1250
	power-collapse	| 9				| 1200
	resume		| 5				| 500
	use device	| 59				| 7700

The most interesting category to me is the "use device" field; 7700us of
busy-wait time that could be put towards better responsiveness, or at the
least less power usage.

Signed-off-by: Patrick Pannuto &lt;ppannuto@codeaurora.org&gt;
Cc: apw@canonical.com
Cc: corbet@lwn.net
Cc: arjan@linux.intel.com
Cc: Randy Dunlap &lt;rdunlap@xenotime.net&gt;
Cc: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Revert "timer: Added usleep[_range] timer"</title>
<updated>2010-08-04T08:53:00+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Thomas Gleixner</name>
<email>tglx@linutronix.de</email>
</author>
<published>2010-08-04T08:53:00+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=e1b004c3ef9c59db5f013528628b51c8653155ec'/>
<id>e1b004c3ef9c59db5f013528628b51c8653155ec</id>
<content type='text'>
This reverts commit 22b8f15c2f7130bb0386f548428df2ffd4e81903 to merge
an advanced version.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This reverts commit 22b8f15c2f7130bb0386f548428df2ffd4e81903 to merge
an advanced version.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>timer: add on-stack deferrable timer interfaces</title>
<updated>2010-08-03T13:48:45+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Jesse Barnes</name>
<email>jbarnes@virtuousgeek.org</email>
</author>
<published>2010-05-10T21:26:20+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=8cadd2831bf3abc94f4530e7fdbab7bb39b6b27d'/>
<id>8cadd2831bf3abc94f4530e7fdbab7bb39b6b27d</id>
<content type='text'>
In some cases (for instance with kernel threads) it may be desireable to
use on-stack deferrable timers to get their power saving benefits.  Add
interfaces to support this for the IPS driver.

Signed-off-by: Jesse Barnes &lt;jbarnes@virtuousgeek.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Matthew Garrett &lt;mjg@redhat.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
In some cases (for instance with kernel threads) it may be desireable to
use on-stack deferrable timers to get their power saving benefits.  Add
interfaces to support this for the IPS driver.

Signed-off-by: Jesse Barnes &lt;jbarnes@virtuousgeek.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Matthew Garrett &lt;mjg@redhat.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
</feed>
