Ingo Molnar wrote:
i have released the 2.6.13-rt6 tree, which can be downloaded from the
usual place:
http://redhat.com/~mingo/realtime-preempt/
there are lots of small updates all across and there's a big feature as
well in this release: a complete rework of the high-resolution timers
framework, from Thomas Gleixner, called 'ktimers'.
under the ktimer framework the HR (and posix) timers live in a separate
domain, have their own (per-CPU) rbtree to stay scalable and
deterministic even with a high number of timers. Another positive effect
of the introduction of separate ktimers is that kernel/timer.c is now
using preemptible locks again, removing the cascade() worst-case
latency. The cleanup factor is high as well: the ktimer framework
slashes 1300+ lines off the HRT code. See kernel/ktimer.c for details.
the end-effect of ktimers is a much more deterministic HRT engine. The
original merging of HR timers into the stock timer wheel was a Bad Idea
(tm). We intend to push the ktimer subsystem upstream as well.
Well, having spent a bit of time looking at the code it appears that a
lot of the ideas we looked at and discarded (see
[email protected]) are in this. Shame it
was all done with out reference or comment to that list, anyone on it or
even the lkml.
I DO agree that it _looks_ nicer, cleaner and so on. But there are a
lot of things we rejected in here and they really do need, at least, a
hard look.
A few of the top issues:
time in nanoseconds 64-bits, requires a divide to do much of anything
with it. Divides are slow and should be avoided if possible. This is
especially true in the embedded market.
The rbtree is a high overhead tree. I suspect performance problems
here. If it is the right answer here, then why not use it for normal
timers? A list of timers is a rather unique thing and, I think,
deserves a management structure that accounts for the fact that the
elements in the tree are perishable.
It appears that the "monotonic_clock" is being used to drive ktimers.
The "monotonic_clock" was NEVER meant to poke outside of the kernel. It
is a raw kernel clock that is only required to be monotonic with nothing
said about accuracy. It should NOT be confused with CLOCK_MONOTONIC
which is directly tied to xtime and therefor is ntp corrected.
These are only the concerns I have from having a rather quick look at
the code. I am sure that there are other issues...
--
George Anzinger [email protected]
HRT (High-res-timers): http://sourceforge.net/projects/high-res-timers/
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