Re: [RFC] Dynamic Tick and Deferrable Timer Support
From: Jon Hunter
Date: Thu Jan 29 2009 - 11:29:54 EST
Pallipadi, Venkatesh wrote:
max_delta would depend on the timer in the platform. With HPET this
should be much larger than 2.15 secs.
So I agree that the HPET hardware in newer devices themselves would
allow longer sleep periods. However, this is not the problem I was raising.
The problem is that the dynamic tick uses a 32-bit variable,
max_delta_ns, to define that max sleep time of a device in nanoseconds.
The maximum value that this variable can be assigned is LONG_MAX or
0x7fffffff nanoseconds (see function clockevent_delta2ns). The value
0x7fffffff nanoseconds equates to ~2.15 seconds. Hence, without
increasing the dynamic range of max_delta_ns (ie. make this a 64-bit
integer) or change the base of this variable from nanoseconds to
milliseconds, I don't see how the device will ever sleep for longer than
~2.15 seconds.
I have spent several weeks trying to suppress kernel timers using the
deferred timers and lengthen the sleep time. I am now able to get the
device to sleep for minutes but I found that max_delta_ns is a limiting
factor. I will be surprised if you can sleep for longer than ~2.15
seconds with the current implementation.
Let me know if this makes sense.
Ok. ïThinking about it a bit more, I think we can push this
patch along.
Thomas/Andrew, can one of you pick up this patch..
Great thanks.
Jon
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