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Date:      Mon, 04 Feb 2002 23:42:09 -0500 (EST)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
To:        John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com>
Cc:        dominic_marks@btinternet.com, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: A question about timecounters
Message-ID:  <XFMail.020204234209.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <200202042157.g14LvaX02099@vashon.polstra.com>

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On 04-Feb-02 John Polstra wrote:
> In article <20020204213450.E923@gallium.localdomain>,
> Dominic Marks  <dominic_marks@btinternet.com> 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 <jhb@FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/

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