From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Feb 4 20:42:18 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mail12.speakeasy.net (mail12.speakeasy.net [216.254.0.212]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 60AC837B416 for ; Mon, 4 Feb 2002 20:42:13 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 15810 invoked from network); 5 Feb 2002 04:42:11 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO laptop.baldwin.cx) ([65.91.155.36]) (envelope-sender ) by mail12.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 5 Feb 2002 04:42:11 -0000 Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.4.0 on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <200202042157.g14LvaX02099@vashon.polstra.com> Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 23:42:09 -0500 (EST) From: John Baldwin To: John Polstra Subject: Re: A question about timecounters Cc: dominic_marks@btinternet.com, hackers@freebsd.org Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 04-Feb-02 John Polstra wrote: > In article <20020204213450.E923@gallium.localdomain>, > Dominic Marks wrote: >> On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 01:21:25PM -0800, John Polstra wrote: >> > I'm trying to understand the timecounter code, and in particular the >> > reason for the "microuptime went backwards" messages which I see on >> > just about every machine I have, whether running -stable or -current. >> >> I see them everywhere with -CURRENT, but not at all with -STABLE. This is >> with two seperate machines. Perhaps that may add clues. > > I'm looking for something less empirical than that. When somebody > says this problem is caused by too much interrupt latency, I assume > they have a mental model of what is going wrong when this excessive > latency occurs. Given that, it should be possible to make a statement > like, "If X is never locked out for longer than Y, this problem > cannot happen." I'm looking for definitions of X and Y. X might be > hardclock() or softclock() or non-interrupt kernel processing. Y > would be some measure of time, probably a function of HZ and/or the > timecounter frequency. X is hardclock I think, since hardclock() calls tc_windup(). I'm not sure what Y is except that it is indeed a known value. phk should know as he is Mr. Timecounter. > John > -- > John Polstra > John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA > "Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence." -- Chögyam Trungpa -- John Baldwin <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message