Re: [PATCH net-next v4] ptp: add Alibaba CIPU PTP clock driver

[Wen Gu]

On 2025/8/22 04:12, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Thu, 2025-08-21 at 13:05 -0700, Richard Cochran wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 11:38:14AM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> >
> > > Maybe it's just me, but in general I really wish someone stepped up
> > > and created a separate subsystem for all these cloud / vm clocks.
> > > They have nothing to do with PTP. In my mind PTP clocks are simple HW
> > > tickers on which we build all the time related stuff. While this driver
> > > reports the base year for the epoch and leap second status via sysfs.
> >
> > Yeah, that is my feeling as well.
>
> Agreed. While vmclock is presented as a PTP clock for compatibility,
> it's more than that because it can do better than simply giving a
> single precise point in time. It actually tells the guest the precise
> relationship between the hardware counter and real time, much like the
> private data structure exposed from the kernel to vDSO gettimeofday.
>
> We should work on having the kernel consume that *directly* and feed
> its CLOCK_REALTIME with it. Having hundreds of guests on the same host
> all recalculate the same thing based on a set of points in time,
> obtained through /dev/ptpX or otherwise, is just daft.

Hi David,

How does vmclock work in a bare‑metal scenario, given that there is no
guest–hypervisor architecture?

You mentioned "vmclock over PCI", do you mean passing a PCI device to the
bare‑metal? What is this PCI device, and which driver does it use?

Thanks.