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From: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>
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Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:49:15 -0400 (EDT)
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Subject: Is the TSC timecounter safe on SMP system?
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I have a system where the TSC timecounter is quite a bit more accurate
(or perhaps its just much cheaper) than the ACPI timecounter.  This is a
single CPU, HTT system running an SMP kernel.

A simple program which calls gettimeofday() in a tight loop, looking
for the microseconds to change sees ~998,000 microsecond updates/sec
with kern.timecounter.hardware=TSC, and 28,500 updates/sec with ACPI-safe.

1) Is it safe to switch to TSC?

2) If yes, would it be safe to switch to TSC if this was a real
   SMP system with multiple physical cpus?

Thanks,

Drew