Hi Marcelo, > Whats prev_period for, since in practice the period will not change > between interrupts (OS programs comparator once, or perhaps twice > during bootup) ? 'prev_period' is needed if a guest o/s changes the comparator period 'on the fly' (without stopping and restarting the timer). guest o/s changes period | ti(n-1) | ti(n) ti(n+1) | v | | +---------------------+------------------------------+ <--- prev_period ---> <---------- period ----------> The idea is that each timer interrupt represents a certain quantum of time (the comparator period). If a guest o/s changes the period between timer interrupt 'n-1' and timer interrupt 'n', I think the new value should not take effect before timer interrupt 'n'. Timer interrupt 'n' still represents the old/previous quantum, and timer interrupt 'n+1' represents the new quantum. Hence, the patch decrements 'ticks_not_accounted' by 'prev_period' and sets 'prev_period' to 'period' when an interrupt was delivered to the guest o/s. + irq_delivered = update_irq(t, 1); + if (irq_delivered) { + t->ticks_not_accounted -= t->prev_period; + t->prev_period = t->period; + } else { Most of the time 'prev_period' is equal to 'period'. It should only be different in the scenario shown above. Regards, Uli -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html