Re: [PATCH 2/2] Revert "x86/hpet: Reduce HPET counter read contention"

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 10:25:29AM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 04:42:12PM +0800, Zhenzhong Duan wrote:
> > This reverts commit f99fd22e4d4bc84880a8a3117311bbf0e3a6a9dc.
> > 
> > It's unnecessory after commit "acpi_pm: Fix bootup softlockup due to PMTMR
> > counter read contention", the simple HPET access code could be restored.
> > 
> > On a general system with good TSC, TSC is the final default clocksource.
> > So the potential performce loss is only at bootup stage before TSC
> > replacing HPET, we didn't observe obvious delay of bootup.
> 
> The timeline here is:
> 
>  - Len took out SKX from native_calibrate_tsc
>    b51120309348 ("x86/tsc: Fix erroneous TSC rate on Skylake Xeon")
> 
>    This causes the TSC to run through the calibration code, which
>    completes _after_ SMP bringup.
> 
>  - This then caused HPET to be used during SMP bringup, which resulted
>    in Waiman doing the patch you now propose removing.
> 
>    Because large (multi-socket) SKX machines would barely boot.
> 
>    f99fd22e4d4b ("x86/hpet: Reduce HPET counter read contention")

Damn, my memory tricked me.. I just checked the dates on those patches
and I got it in reverse.

Anyway, the point still stands, when TSC is wrecked we still need HPET.
And you don't see a difference with the revert because of
clocksource_tsc_early, which didn't exist at the time.