On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 01:27:48PM -0400, Jung-uk Kim wrote:
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> On 2012-07-25 10:44:04 -0400, Bruce Evans wrote:
> > On Wed, 25 Jul 2012, Andriy Gapon wrote:
> >
> >> on 25/07/2012 13:21 Konstantin Belousov said the following:
> >>> ... diff --git a/sys/x86/x86/tsc.c b/sys/x86/x86/tsc.c index
> >>> 085c339..229b351 100644 --- a/sys/x86/x86/tsc.c +++
> >>> b/sys/x86/x86/tsc.c @@ -594,6 +594,7 @@ static u_int
> >>> tsc_get_timecount(struct timecounter *tc __unused) {
> >>>
> >>> + rmb(); return (rdtsc32()); }
> >>
> >> This makes sense to me. We probably want correctness over
> >> performance here. [BTW, I originally thought that the change was
> >> here; brain malfunction]
> >
> > And I liked the original change because it wasn't here :-).
> >
> >>> @@ -602,8 +603,9 @@ tsc_get_timecount_low(struct timecounter
> >>> *tc) { uint32_t rv;
> >>>
> >>> + rmb(); __asm __volatile("rdtsc; shrd %%cl, %%edx, %0" -
> >>> : "=a" (rv) : "c" ((int)(intptr_t)tc->tc_priv) : "edx"); +
> >>> : "=a" (rv) : "c" ((int)(intptr_t)tc->tc_priv) : "edx"); return
> >>> (rv); }
> >>>
> >>
> >> It would correct here too, but not sure if it would make any
> >> difference given that some lower bits are discarded anyway.
> >> Probably depends on exact CPU.
> >
> > It is needed to pessimize this too. :-)
> >
> > As I have complained before, the loss of resolution from the shift
> > is easy to see by reading the time from userland, even with syscall
> > overhead taking 10-20 times longer than the read. On core2 with
> > TSC-low, a clock- checking utility gives:
> >
> > % min 481, max 12031, mean 530.589452, std 51.633626 % 1th: 550
> > (1296487 observations) % 2th: 481 (448425 observations) % 3th: 482
> > (142650 observations) % 4th: 549 (61945 observations) % 5th: 551
> > (47619 observations)
> >
> > The numbers are diffences in nanoseconds measured by
> > clock_gettime(). The jump from 481 to 549 is 68. From this I can
> > tell that the clock frequency is 1.86 Ghz and the shift is 128, or
> > the clock frequency is 3.72 Ghz and the shift is 256.
> >
> > On AthlonXP with TSC:
> >
> > % min 273, max 29075, mean 274.412811, std 80.425963 % 1th: 273
> > (853962 observations) % 2th: 274 (745606 observations) % 3th: 275
> > (400212 observations) % 4th: 276 (20 observations) % 5th: 280 (10
> > observations)
> >
> > Now the numbers cluster about the mean. Although syscalls take
> > much longer than the loss of resolution with TSC-low, and even the
> > core2 TSC takes almost as long to read as the loss, it is still
> > possible to see things happening at the limits of the resolution
> > (~0.5 nsec).
> >
> >> And, oh hmm, I read AMD Software Optimization Guide for AMD
> >> Family 10h Processors and they suggest using cpuid (with a note
> >> that it may be intercepted in virtualized environments) or
> >> _mfence_ in the discussed role (Appendix F of the document).
> >> Googling for 'rdtsc mfence lfence' yields some interesting
> >> results.
> >
> > The second hit was for the shrd pessimization/loss of resolution
> > and a memory access hack in lkml in 2011. I now seem to remember
> > jkim mentioning the memory access hack. rmb() on i386 has a
> > related memory access hack, but now with a lock prefix that defeats
> > the point of the 2011 hack (it wanted to save 5 nsec by removing
> > fences). rmb() on amd64 uses lfence.
>
> I believe I mentioned this thread at the time:
>
> https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/691712/
>
> FYI, r238755 is essentially this commit for Linux:
>
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=commit;h=93ce99e849433ede4ce8b410b749dc0cad1100b2
>
> > Some of the other hits are a bit old. The 8th one was by me in
> > the thread about kib@ implementing gettimeofday() in userland.
>
> Since we have gettimeofday() in userland, the above Linux thread is
> more relevant now, I guess.For some unrelated reasons, we do have lfence;rdtsc sequence in the userland already. Well, it is not exactly such sequence, there are some instructions between, but the main fact is that two consequtive invocations of gettimeofday(2) (*) or clock_gettime(2) are interleaved with lfence on Intels, guaranteeing that backstep of the counter is impossible. * - it is not a syscall anymore. As I said, using recommended mfence;rdtsc sequence for AMDs would require some work, but lets handle the kernel and userspace issues separately. And, I really failed to find what the patch from the thread you referenced tried to fix. Was it really committed into Linux ? I see actual problem of us allowing timecounters going back, and a solution that exactly follows words of both Intel and AMD documentation. This is good one step forward IMHO.
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