On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Franck Bui-Huu wrote: > > I'll have a look at your patches, but I hope you have got about the most > > interesting configuration right, which is the DEC platform > > hmm, I looked at arch/mips/dec/time.c, and I'm not sure to understand it. > Could you give me more info ? Whatever you like! > To be sure we're taking about the same thing, I'm calling "hpt" the timer > in CP0 _only_. If you have others timers let's call them "timer". We can agree on it for the purpose of this consideration, but otherwise HPT is meant to mean a High-Precision Counter, that is a counter that improves the resolution (precision) of that given by the timer interrupt itself. This is how current code interpretes the name too. > > where you can have one of these: > > > > 1. No HPT at all. > > > > What's generating the tick interrupt in this case ? For DEC an external DS1287 is always the timer interrupt source. In this case this is the resolution you can get from gettimeofday() -- not terribly impressive. > > 2. HPT in the chipset. > > > > What do you mean by chipset ? the DS1287 ? This is one of the motherboard components, called IOASIC. Starting from a certain revision this chip includes a 32-bit free-running counter (timer) that is clocked from the TURBOchannel (the peripheral bus used in these systems) clock, which varies across systems, but is somewhere between 12.5MHz and 25MHz. Obviously the DS1287 does not include any kind of readable timer that could improve the resolution of the timer interrupt -- otherwise this whole complication would be a non-issue. > > 3. HPT in CP0. > > > > Reading the dec code, it seems that whatever the case, you don't use > the hpt cp0 as tick interrupt source. It's only use as a clock source. > If so, why ? That is correct and there is no reason to use the CP0 timer interrupt as it has its issues (as mentioned in the other mail) and all the DEC systems that we support have a DS1287 chip that can generate a timer interrupt just fine. The CP0 counter register is only used as a 32-bit free-running counter (timer) to improve the resolution of time recorded by timer interrupts. Maciej
