In some SMP systems, cpu-local timers may stop delivering interruptsApart from the relevant comments given against couple of patches and
when in low power states, or not all CPUs may have local timers. To
support these systems we have a mechanism for broadcasting timer ticks
to other CPUs. This mechanism relies on the struct
clock_event_device::broadcast function pointer, which is a
driver-specific mechanism for broadcasting ticks to other CPUs.
As the broadcast mechanism is architecture-specific, placing the
broadcast function on struct clock_event_device ties each driver to a
single architecture. Additionally the driver or architecture backend
must handle the routing of broadcast ticks to the correct
clock_event_device, leading to duplication of the list of active
clock_event_devices.
These patches introduce a generic mechanism for handling the receipt of
timer broadcasts, and an optional architecture-specific broadcast
function which allows drivers to be decoupled from a particular
architecture will retaining support for timer tick broadcasts. These
mechanisms are wired up for the arm port, and have been boot-tested on a
pandaboard.