Boris, Sorry for the delay. On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 06:19:08PM +0100, boris brezillon wrote: > On 27/11/2013 15:56, Jason Cooper wrote: > >On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 01:44:45PM +0100, Boris BREZILLON wrote: > >>This patch adds support for accuracy retrieval on fixed clocks. > >>It also adds a new dt property called 'clock-accuracy' to define the clock > >>accuracy. > >> > >>This can be usefull for oscillator (RC, crystal, ...) definitions which are > >>always given an accuracy characteristic. > > > >I think we need to be more explicit in the binding and the API, > >especially when providing a method to recalculate the accuracy. I > >presume this recalculated value would be relative against the root > >clock? > > Yes, indirectly. > Actually the clk accuracy depends on the whole clock chain, and is > calculated either by comparing the real clk rate to the theorical clk > rate > (accuracy = absolute_value((theorical_clk_rate - real_clk_rate)) / > theorical_clk_rate), > or by adding all the accuracies (expressed in ppm, ppb or ppt) of > the clk chain > (accuracy = current_clk_accuracy + parent_clk_accuracy). > > Say you have a root clk with a +-10000 ppb accuracy, then a pll multiplying > this root clk by 40 and introducing a possible drift of +- 1000 ppb and > eventually a system clk based on this pll with a perfect div by 2 prescaler > (accuracy = 0 ppb). > > If I understand correctly how accuracy propagates accross the clk tree, > you'll end up with a system clk with a +- 11000 ppb accuracy. > > e.g.: > root clk = 12MHz +- 10000 ppb => 12 MHz * (1 - (10000 / 10^9)) < > root clk < 12 MHz * (1 + (10000 / 10^9)) > => 11,99988 MHz > < root clk < 12,00012 MHz > pll clk = ((root clk) * 40) +- 1000 ppb => (11,99988 MHz * 40) * > (1 - (1000 / 10^9)) < pll clk < (12,00012 MHz * 40) * (1 + (1000 / > 10^9)) > => > 479,994720005 MHz < pll clk < 480,005280005 MHz > > system clk = ((pll clk) / 2) +- XXX ppb => 479,994720005 MHz / 2 < > system clk < 480,005280005 MHz / 2 > => > 239,997360002 MHz < system clk < 240,002640002 MHz > => > system clk accuracy = 0,002640002 / 240 = 11000 ppb > > Please tell me if my assumptions are false. Nope, it looks fine by me afaict. Thanks for the clear walk through. > >There really needs to be two attributes here: the rated accuracy from > >the manufacturer, and the calculated accuracy wrt another clock in the > >system. We only need a binding for the manufacturer rating since the > >calculated accuracy is determined at runtime. > > Actually when I proposed this new functionnality I only had the theorical > (or manufacturer rated) accuracy in mind. Yes, I see we are concerned about two different things. You need to get the theoretical accuracy to assist with clock selection. I was concerned that the recalc function was attempting to measure the real accuracy of a given clock from a tree. Since we're only talking theoretical accuracy, that makes things a lot simpler. :) > But providing an estimated accuracy (based on another clk) sounds > interresting if your reference clk is an extremly accurate one. Yes, I was thinking against a GPS PPS signal, but again, not relevant to this patch series. Also, it would be complicated by the fact that there is no high-speed counter on ARM. > >I would also prefer to see an unknown accuracy be -1. > I decided to keep 0 as a default value for unimplemented recalc_accuracy > (or unspecified fixed accuracy) to keep existing implementation coherent. > > 0 means the clk is perfect, and I thought it would be easier to handle a > perfect clk (even if this is not really the case) than handling an > error case. > > Another aspect is the propagation of the clk accuracy accross the clk tree. > Returning -1 in the middle of the clk chain will drop the previous > clk accuracy > calculation. > > Anyway, I can change this if you think this is more appropriate. No, in light of this being purely theoretical accuracy, I'm fine with it if Mike is. > >There are already > >clocks on the market (PPS reference clocks) with accuracies of > >0.1ppb/day [1]. Obviously, these aren't system clocks. So the limit on > >accuracy may be a non-issue. However, it may be worth changing the > >binding property to express the units. > Wow, 0.1 ppb, this is impressive :-). > > > This needs more than changing the dt bindings: I currently store the > accuracy value in an unsigned long field, and expressing this in ppt > (parts per trillion) may implies storing this in an u64 field (or store a > unit field). No, let's not derail this series. ;-) You've addressed my concerns. Thanks for taking the time to bring me up to speed. thx, Jason. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-doc" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
