x86: Skip verification by the watchdog for TSC clocksource.

Impact: Changes timekeeping on Vmware (or with tsc=reliable).

This is achieved by resetting the CLOCKSOURCE_MUST_VERIFY flag.

We add a tsc=reliable commandline option to enable this.
This enables legacy hardware without HPET, LAPIC, or ACPI timers
to enter high-resolution timer mode.

Along with that have extended this to be used in virtualization environement
too. Now we also set this flag if the X86_FEATURE_TSC_RELIABLE bit is set.

This is important since there is a wrap-around problem with the acpi_pm timer.
The acpi_pm counter is just 24bits and this can overflow in ~4 seconds. With
the NO_HZ kernels in virtualized environment, there can be situations when
the guest is descheduled for longer duration, as a result we may miss the wrap
of the acpi counter. When TSC is used as a clocksource and acpi_pm timer is
being used as the watchdog clocksource this error in acpi_pm results in TSC
being marked as unstable, and essentially results in time dropping in chunks
of 4 seconds whenever this wrap is missed. Since the virtualized TSC is
reliable on VMware, we should always use the TSCs clocksource on VMware, so
we skip the verfication at runtime, by checking for the feature bit.

Since we reset the flag for mgeode systems too, i have combined
the mgeode case with the feature bit check.

Signed-off-by: Jeff Hansen <jhansen@cardaccess-inc.com>
Signed-off-by: Alok N Kataria <akataria@vmware.com>
Signed-off-by: Dan Hecht <dhecht@vmware.com>
Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 1bbcaa8982b6..dc6b06f67fca 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -2267,6 +2267,13 @@ and is between 256 and 4096 characters. It is defined in the file
                         Format:
                         <io>,<irq>,<dma>,<dma2>,<sb_io>,<sb_irq>,<sb_dma>,<mpu_io>,<mpu_irq>
 
+        tsc=            Disable clocksource-must-verify flag for TSC.
+                        Format: <string>
+                        [x86] reliable: mark tsc clocksource as reliable, this
+                        disables clocksource verification at runtime.
+                        Used to enable high-resolution timer mode on older
+                        hardware, and in virtualized environment.
+
         turbografx.map[2|3]=    [HW,JOY]
                         TurboGraFX parallel port interface
                         Format: