Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 12 Jan 1999 08:32:38 +1100
From:      Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@auss2.alcatel.com.au>
To:        steve@Watt.COM
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: IRQ entropy causes panics?
Message-ID:  <99Jan12.083159est.40333@border.alcanet.com.au>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sat 9th January, Steve Watt <steve@Watt.COM> wrote:
>Is there a microtime() call already made at each interrupt entry?
No.

>  Something on
>the order of 5uS on a faster ISA system I tested on

On a non-SMP P5 or later system RDTSC is a cheap and accurate
alternative.  [The problem on SMP systems is that the TSCs aren't
synchronised so you need to know which CPU you are on to use it].

On 3.x, both microtime() and nanotime() will use RDTSC (and not
perform any ISA bus cycles) if a working TSC is found, SMP is not
defined and either it isn't an APM BIOS, or APM isn't compiled into
the kernel.  The actual clock being used, together with the lowest
level overhead of calling it, is reported by default during boot, eg
'Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz cost 2376 ns'

On 2.x, microtime() will use RDTSC if support for 586/686 is compiled
in and a working TSC is found.

Peter
--
Peter Jeremy (VK2PJ)                    peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au
Alcatel Australia Limited
41 Mandible St                          Phone: +61 2 9690 5019
ALEXANDRIA  NSW  2015                   Fax:   +61 2 9690 5982

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?99Jan12.083159est.40333>