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1 | High resolution timers and dynamic ticks design notes | ||
2 | ----------------------------------------------------- | ||
3 | |||
4 | Further information can be found in the paper of the OLS 2006 talk "hrtimers | ||
5 | and beyond". The paper is part of the OLS 2006 Proceedings Volume 1, which can | ||
6 | be found on the OLS website: | ||
7 | http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2006/linuxsymposium_procv1.pdf | ||
8 | |||
9 | The slides to this talk are available from: | ||
10 | http://tglx.de/projects/hrtimers/ols2006-hrtimers.pdf | ||
11 | |||
12 | The slides contain five figures (pages 2, 15, 18, 20, 22), which illustrate the | ||
13 | changes in the time(r) related Linux subsystems. Figure #1 (p. 2) shows the | ||
14 | design of the Linux time(r) system before hrtimers and other building blocks | ||
15 | got merged into mainline. | ||
16 | |||
17 | Note: the paper and the slides are talking about "clock event source", while we | ||
18 | switched to the name "clock event devices" in meantime. | ||
19 | |||
20 | The design contains the following basic building blocks: | ||
21 | |||
22 | - hrtimer base infrastructure | ||
23 | - timeofday and clock source management | ||
24 | - clock event management | ||
25 | - high resolution timer functionality | ||
26 | - dynamic ticks | ||
27 | |||
28 | |||
29 | hrtimer base infrastructure | ||
30 | --------------------------- | ||
31 | |||
32 | The hrtimer base infrastructure was merged into the 2.6.16 kernel. Details of | ||
33 | the base implementation are covered in Documentation/hrtimers/hrtimer.txt. See | ||
34 | also figure #2 (OLS slides p. 15) | ||
35 | |||
36 | The main differences to the timer wheel, which holds the armed timer_list type | ||
37 | timers are: | ||
38 | - time ordered enqueueing into a rb-tree | ||
39 | - independent of ticks (the processing is based on nanoseconds) | ||
40 | |||
41 | |||
42 | timeofday and clock source management | ||
43 | ------------------------------------- | ||
44 | |||
45 | John Stultz's Generic Time Of Day (GTOD) framework moves a large portion of | ||
46 | code out of the architecture-specific areas into a generic management | ||
47 | framework, as illustrated in figure #3 (OLS slides p. 18). The architecture | ||
48 | specific portion is reduced to the low level hardware details of the clock | ||
49 | sources, which are registered in the framework and selected on a quality based | ||
50 | decision. The low level code provides hardware setup and readout routines and | ||
51 | initializes data structures, which are used by the generic time keeping code to | ||
52 | convert the clock ticks to nanosecond based time values. All other time keeping | ||
53 | related functionality is moved into the generic code. The GTOD base patch got | ||
54 | merged into the 2.6.18 kernel. | ||
55 | |||
56 | Further information about the Generic Time Of Day framework is available in the | ||
57 | OLS 2005 Proceedings Volume 1: | ||
58 | http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2005/linuxsymposium_procv1.pdf | ||
59 | |||
60 | The paper "We Are Not Getting Any Younger: A New Approach to Time and | ||
61 | Timers" was written by J. Stultz, D.V. Hart, & N. Aravamudan. | ||
62 | |||
63 | Figure #3 (OLS slides p.18) illustrates the transformation. | ||
64 | |||
65 | |||
66 | clock event management | ||
67 | ---------------------- | ||
68 | |||
69 | While clock sources provide read access to the monotonically increasing time | ||
70 | value, clock event devices are used to schedule the next event | ||
71 | interrupt(s). The next event is currently defined to be periodic, with its | ||
72 | period defined at compile time. The setup and selection of the event device | ||
73 | for various event driven functionalities is hardwired into the architecture | ||
74 | dependent code. This results in duplicated code across all architectures and | ||
75 | makes it extremely difficult to change the configuration of the system to use | ||
76 | event interrupt devices other than those already built into the | ||
77 | architecture. Another implication of the current design is that it is necessary | ||
78 | to touch all the architecture-specific implementations in order to provide new | ||
79 | functionality like high resolution timers or dynamic ticks. | ||
80 | |||
81 | The clock events subsystem tries to address this problem by providing a generic | ||
82 | solution to manage clock event devices and their usage for the various clock | ||
83 | event driven kernel functionalities. The goal of the clock event subsystem is | ||
84 | to minimize the clock event related architecture dependent code to the pure | ||
85 | hardware related handling and to allow easy addition and utilization of new | ||
86 | clock event devices. It also minimizes the duplicated code across the | ||
87 | architectures as it provides generic functionality down to the interrupt | ||
88 | service handler, which is almost inherently hardware dependent. | ||
89 | |||
90 | Clock event devices are registered either by the architecture dependent boot | ||
91 | code or at module insertion time. Each clock event device fills a data | ||
92 | structure with clock-specific property parameters and callback functions. The | ||
93 | clock event management decides, by using the specified property parameters, the | ||
94 | set of system functions a clock event device will be used to support. This | ||
95 | includes the distinction of per-CPU and per-system global event devices. | ||
96 | |||
97 | System-level global event devices are used for the Linux periodic tick. Per-CPU | ||
98 | event devices are used to provide local CPU functionality such as process | ||
99 | accounting, profiling, and high resolution timers. | ||
100 | |||
101 | The management layer assigns one or more of the following functions to a clock | ||
102 | event device: | ||
103 | - system global periodic tick (jiffies update) | ||
104 | - cpu local update_process_times | ||
105 | - cpu local profiling | ||
106 | - cpu local next event interrupt (non periodic mode) | ||
107 | |||
108 | The clock event device delegates the selection of those timer interrupt related | ||
109 | functions completely to the management layer. The clock management layer stores | ||
110 | a function pointer in the device description structure, which has to be called | ||
111 | from the hardware level handler. This removes a lot of duplicated code from the | ||
112 | architecture specific timer interrupt handlers and hands the control over the | ||
113 | clock event devices and the assignment of timer interrupt related functionality | ||
114 | to the core code. | ||
115 | |||
116 | The clock event layer API is rather small. Aside from the clock event device | ||
117 | registration interface it provides functions to schedule the next event | ||
118 | interrupt, clock event device notification service and support for suspend and | ||
119 | resume. | ||
120 | |||
121 | The framework adds about 700 lines of code which results in a 2KB increase of | ||
122 | the kernel binary size. The conversion of i386 removes about 100 lines of | ||
123 | code. The binary size decrease is in the range of 400 byte. We believe that the | ||
124 | increase of flexibility and the avoidance of duplicated code across | ||
125 | architectures justifies the slight increase of the binary size. | ||
126 | |||
127 | The conversion of an architecture has no functional impact, but allows to | ||
128 | utilize the high resolution and dynamic tick functionalites without any change | ||
129 | to the clock event device and timer interrupt code. After the conversion the | ||
130 | enabling of high resolution timers and dynamic ticks is simply provided by | ||
131 | adding the kernel/time/Kconfig file to the architecture specific Kconfig and | ||
132 | adding the dynamic tick specific calls to the idle routine (a total of 3 lines | ||
133 | added to the idle function and the Kconfig file) | ||
134 | |||
135 | Figure #4 (OLS slides p.20) illustrates the transformation. | ||
136 | |||
137 | |||
138 | high resolution timer functionality | ||
139 | ----------------------------------- | ||
140 | |||
141 | During system boot it is not possible to use the high resolution timer | ||
142 | functionality, while making it possible would be difficult and would serve no | ||
143 | useful function. The initialization of the clock event device framework, the | ||
144 | clock source framework (GTOD) and hrtimers itself has to be done and | ||
145 | appropriate clock sources and clock event devices have to be registered before | ||
146 | the high resolution functionality can work. Up to the point where hrtimers are | ||
147 | initialized, the system works in the usual low resolution periodic mode. The | ||
148 | clock source and the clock event device layers provide notification functions | ||
149 | which inform hrtimers about availability of new hardware. hrtimers validates | ||
150 | the usability of the registered clock sources and clock event devices before | ||
151 | switching to high resolution mode. This ensures also that a kernel which is | ||
152 | configured for high resolution timers can run on a system which lacks the | ||
153 | necessary hardware support. | ||
154 | |||
155 | The high resolution timer code does not support SMP machines which have only | ||
156 | global clock event devices. The support of such hardware would involve IPI | ||
157 | calls when an interrupt happens. The overhead would be much larger than the | ||
158 | benefit. This is the reason why we currently disable high resolution and | ||
159 | dynamic ticks on i386 SMP systems which stop the local APIC in C3 power | ||
160 | state. A workaround is available as an idea, but the problem has not been | ||
161 | tackled yet. | ||
162 | |||
163 | The time ordered insertion of timers provides all the infrastructure to decide | ||
164 | whether the event device has to be reprogrammed when a timer is added. The | ||
165 | decision is made per timer base and synchronized across per-cpu timer bases in | ||
166 | a support function. The design allows the system to utilize separate per-CPU | ||
167 | clock event devices for the per-CPU timer bases, but currently only one | ||
168 | reprogrammable clock event device per-CPU is utilized. | ||
169 | |||
170 | When the timer interrupt happens, the next event interrupt handler is called | ||
171 | from the clock event distribution code and moves expired timers from the | ||
172 | red-black tree to a separate double linked list and invokes the softirq | ||
173 | handler. An additional mode field in the hrtimer structure allows the system to | ||
174 | execute callback functions directly from the next event interrupt handler. This | ||
175 | is restricted to code which can safely be executed in the hard interrupt | ||
176 | context. This applies, for example, to the common case of a wakeup function as | ||
177 | used by nanosleep. The advantage of executing the handler in the interrupt | ||
178 | context is the avoidance of up to two context switches - from the interrupted | ||
179 | context to the softirq and to the task which is woken up by the expired | ||
180 | timer. | ||
181 | |||
182 | Once a system has switched to high resolution mode, the periodic tick is | ||
183 | switched off. This disables the per system global periodic clock event device - | ||
184 | e.g. the PIT on i386 SMP systems. | ||
185 | |||
186 | The periodic tick functionality is provided by an per-cpu hrtimer. The callback | ||
187 | function is executed in the next event interrupt context and updates jiffies | ||
188 | and calls update_process_times and profiling. The implementation of the hrtimer | ||
189 | based periodic tick is designed to be extended with dynamic tick functionality. | ||
190 | This allows to use a single clock event device to schedule high resolution | ||
191 | timer and periodic events (jiffies tick, profiling, process accounting) on UP | ||
192 | systems. This has been proved to work with the PIT on i386 and the Incrementer | ||
193 | on PPC. | ||
194 | |||
195 | The softirq for running the hrtimer queues and executing the callbacks has been | ||
196 | separated from the tick bound timer softirq to allow accurate delivery of high | ||
197 | resolution timer signals which are used by itimer and POSIX interval | ||
198 | timers. The execution of this softirq can still be delayed by other softirqs, | ||
199 | but the overall latencies have been significantly improved by this separation. | ||
200 | |||
201 | Figure #5 (OLS slides p.22) illustrates the transformation. | ||
202 | |||
203 | |||
204 | dynamic ticks | ||
205 | ------------- | ||
206 | |||
207 | Dynamic ticks are the logical consequence of the hrtimer based periodic tick | ||
208 | replacement (sched_tick). The functionality of the sched_tick hrtimer is | ||
209 | extended by three functions: | ||
210 | |||
211 | - hrtimer_stop_sched_tick | ||
212 | - hrtimer_restart_sched_tick | ||
213 | - hrtimer_update_jiffies | ||
214 | |||
215 | hrtimer_stop_sched_tick() is called when a CPU goes into idle state. The code | ||
216 | evaluates the next scheduled timer event (from both hrtimers and the timer | ||
217 | wheel) and in case that the next event is further away than the next tick it | ||
218 | reprograms the sched_tick to this future event, to allow longer idle sleeps | ||
219 | without worthless interruption by the periodic tick. The function is also | ||
220 | called when an interrupt happens during the idle period, which does not cause a | ||
221 | reschedule. The call is necessary as the interrupt handler might have armed a | ||
222 | new timer whose expiry time is before the time which was identified as the | ||
223 | nearest event in the previous call to hrtimer_stop_sched_tick. | ||
224 | |||
225 | hrtimer_restart_sched_tick() is called when the CPU leaves the idle state before | ||
226 | it calls schedule(). hrtimer_restart_sched_tick() resumes the periodic tick, | ||
227 | which is kept active until the next call to hrtimer_stop_sched_tick(). | ||
228 | |||
229 | hrtimer_update_jiffies() is called from irq_enter() when an interrupt happens | ||
230 | in the idle period to make sure that jiffies are up to date and the interrupt | ||
231 | handler has not to deal with an eventually stale jiffy value. | ||
232 | |||
233 | The dynamic tick feature provides statistical values which are exported to | ||
234 | userspace via /proc/stats and can be made available for enhanced power | ||
235 | management control. | ||
236 | |||
237 | The implementation leaves room for further development like full tickless | ||
238 | systems, where the time slice is controlled by the scheduler, variable | ||
239 | frequency profiling, and a complete removal of jiffies in the future. | ||
240 | |||
241 | |||
242 | Aside the current initial submission of i386 support, the patchset has been | ||
243 | extended to x86_64 and ARM already. Initial (work in progress) support is also | ||
244 | available for MIPS and PowerPC. | ||
245 | |||
246 | Thomas, Ingo | ||
247 | |||
248 | |||
249 | |||
diff --git a/Documentation/hrtimers/hrtimers.txt b/Documentation/hrtimers/hrtimers.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ce31f65e12e7..000000000000 --- a/Documentation/hrtimers/hrtimers.txt +++ /dev/null | |||
@@ -1,178 +0,0 @@ | |||
1 | |||
2 | hrtimers - subsystem for high-resolution kernel timers | ||
3 | ---------------------------------------------------- | ||
4 | |||
5 | This patch introduces a new subsystem for high-resolution kernel timers. | ||
6 | |||
7 | One might ask the question: we already have a timer subsystem | ||
8 | (kernel/timers.c), why do we need two timer subsystems? After a lot of | ||
9 | back and forth trying to integrate high-resolution and high-precision | ||
10 | features into the existing timer framework, and after testing various | ||
11 | such high-resolution timer implementations in practice, we came to the | ||
12 | conclusion that the timer wheel code is fundamentally not suitable for | ||
13 | such an approach. We initially didn't believe this ('there must be a way | ||
14 | to solve this'), and spent a considerable effort trying to integrate | ||
15 | things into the timer wheel, but we failed. In hindsight, there are | ||
16 | several reasons why such integration is hard/impossible: | ||
17 | |||
18 | - the forced handling of low-resolution and high-resolution timers in | ||
19 | the same way leads to a lot of compromises, macro magic and #ifdef | ||
20 | mess. The timers.c code is very "tightly coded" around jiffies and | ||
21 | 32-bitness assumptions, and has been honed and micro-optimized for a | ||
22 | relatively narrow use case (jiffies in a relatively narrow HZ range) | ||
23 | for many years - and thus even small extensions to it easily break | ||
24 | the wheel concept, leading to even worse compromises. The timer wheel | ||
25 | code is very good and tight code, there's zero problems with it in its | ||
26 | current usage - but it is simply not suitable to be extended for | ||
27 | high-res timers. | ||
28 | |||
29 | - the unpredictable [O(N)] overhead of cascading leads to delays which | ||
30 | necessitate a more complex handling of high resolution timers, which | ||
31 | in turn decreases robustness. Such a design still led to rather large | ||
32 | timing inaccuracies. Cascading is a fundamental property of the timer | ||
33 | wheel concept, it cannot be 'designed out' without unevitably | ||
34 | degrading other portions of the timers.c code in an unacceptable way. | ||
35 | |||
36 | - the implementation of the current posix-timer subsystem on top of | ||
37 | the timer wheel has already introduced a quite complex handling of | ||
38 | the required readjusting of absolute CLOCK_REALTIME timers at | ||
39 | settimeofday or NTP time - further underlying our experience by | ||
40 | example: that the timer wheel data structure is too rigid for high-res | ||
41 | timers. | ||
42 | |||
43 | - the timer wheel code is most optimal for use cases which can be | ||
44 | identified as "timeouts". Such timeouts are usually set up to cover | ||
45 | error conditions in various I/O paths, such as networking and block | ||
46 | I/O. The vast majority of those timers never expire and are rarely | ||
47 | recascaded because the expected correct event arrives in time so they | ||
48 | can be removed from the timer wheel before any further processing of | ||
49 | them becomes necessary. Thus the users of these timeouts can accept | ||
50 | the granularity and precision tradeoffs of the timer wheel, and | ||
51 | largely expect the timer subsystem to have near-zero overhead. | ||
52 | Accurate timing for them is not a core purpose - in fact most of the | ||
53 | timeout values used are ad-hoc. For them it is at most a necessary | ||
54 | evil to guarantee the processing of actual timeout completions | ||
55 | (because most of the timeouts are deleted before completion), which | ||
56 | should thus be as cheap and unintrusive as possible. | ||
57 | |||
58 | The primary users of precision timers are user-space applications that | ||
59 | utilize nanosleep, posix-timers and itimer interfaces. Also, in-kernel | ||
60 | users like drivers and subsystems which require precise timed events | ||
61 | (e.g. multimedia) can benefit from the availability of a separate | ||
62 | high-resolution timer subsystem as well. | ||
63 | |||
64 | While this subsystem does not offer high-resolution clock sources just | ||
65 | yet, the hrtimer subsystem can be easily extended with high-resolution | ||
66 | clock capabilities, and patches for that exist and are maturing quickly. | ||
67 | The increasing demand for realtime and multimedia applications along | ||
68 | with other potential users for precise timers gives another reason to | ||
69 | separate the "timeout" and "precise timer" subsystems. | ||
70 | |||
71 | Another potential benefit is that such a separation allows even more | ||
72 | special-purpose optimization of the existing timer wheel for the low | ||
73 | resolution and low precision use cases - once the precision-sensitive | ||
74 | APIs are separated from the timer wheel and are migrated over to | ||
75 | hrtimers. E.g. we could decrease the frequency of the timeout subsystem | ||
76 | from 250 Hz to 100 HZ (or even smaller). | ||
77 | |||
78 | hrtimer subsystem implementation details | ||
79 | ---------------------------------------- | ||
80 | |||
81 | the basic design considerations were: | ||
82 | |||
83 | - simplicity | ||
84 | |||
85 | - data structure not bound to jiffies or any other granularity. All the | ||
86 | kernel logic works at 64-bit nanoseconds resolution - no compromises. | ||
87 | |||
88 | - simplification of existing, timing related kernel code | ||
89 | |||
90 | another basic requirement was the immediate enqueueing and ordering of | ||
91 | timers at activation time. After looking at several possible solutions | ||
92 | such as radix trees and hashes, we chose the red black tree as the basic | ||
93 | data structure. Rbtrees are available as a library in the kernel and are | ||
94 | used in various performance-critical areas of e.g. memory management and | ||
95 | file systems. The rbtree is solely used for time sorted ordering, while | ||
96 | a separate list is used to give the expiry code fast access to the | ||
97 | queued timers, without having to walk the rbtree. | ||
98 | |||
99 | (This separate list is also useful for later when we'll introduce | ||
100 | high-resolution clocks, where we need separate pending and expired | ||
101 | queues while keeping the time-order intact.) | ||
102 | |||
103 | Time-ordered enqueueing is not purely for the purposes of | ||
104 | high-resolution clocks though, it also simplifies the handling of | ||
105 | absolute timers based on a low-resolution CLOCK_REALTIME. The existing | ||
106 | implementation needed to keep an extra list of all armed absolute | ||
107 | CLOCK_REALTIME timers along with complex locking. In case of | ||
108 | settimeofday and NTP, all the timers (!) had to be dequeued, the | ||
109 | time-changing code had to fix them up one by one, and all of them had to | ||
110 | be enqueued again. The time-ordered enqueueing and the storage of the | ||
111 | expiry time in absolute time units removes all this complex and poorly | ||
112 | scaling code from the posix-timer implementation - the clock can simply | ||
113 | be set without having to touch the rbtree. This also makes the handling | ||
114 | of posix-timers simpler in general. | ||
115 | |||
116 | The locking and per-CPU behavior of hrtimers was mostly taken from the | ||
117 | existing timer wheel code, as it is mature and well suited. Sharing code | ||
118 | was not really a win, due to the different data structures. Also, the | ||
119 | hrtimer functions now have clearer behavior and clearer names - such as | ||
120 | hrtimer_try_to_cancel() and hrtimer_cancel() [which are roughly | ||
121 | equivalent to del_timer() and del_timer_sync()] - so there's no direct | ||
122 | 1:1 mapping between them on the algorithmical level, and thus no real | ||
123 | potential for code sharing either. | ||
124 | |||
125 | Basic data types: every time value, absolute or relative, is in a | ||
126 | special nanosecond-resolution type: ktime_t. The kernel-internal | ||
127 | representation of ktime_t values and operations is implemented via | ||
128 | macros and inline functions, and can be switched between a "hybrid | ||
129 | union" type and a plain "scalar" 64bit nanoseconds representation (at | ||
130 | compile time). The hybrid union type optimizes time conversions on 32bit | ||
131 | CPUs. This build-time-selectable ktime_t storage format was implemented | ||
132 | to avoid the performance impact of 64-bit multiplications and divisions | ||
133 | on 32bit CPUs. Such operations are frequently necessary to convert | ||
134 | between the storage formats provided by kernel and userspace interfaces | ||
135 | and the internal time format. (See include/linux/ktime.h for further | ||
136 | details.) | ||
137 | |||
138 | hrtimers - rounding of timer values | ||
139 | ----------------------------------- | ||
140 | |||
141 | the hrtimer code will round timer events to lower-resolution clocks | ||
142 | because it has to. Otherwise it will do no artificial rounding at all. | ||
143 | |||
144 | one question is, what resolution value should be returned to the user by | ||
145 | the clock_getres() interface. This will return whatever real resolution | ||
146 | a given clock has - be it low-res, high-res, or artificially-low-res. | ||
147 | |||
148 | hrtimers - testing and verification | ||
149 | ---------------------------------- | ||
150 | |||
151 | We used the high-resolution clock subsystem ontop of hrtimers to verify | ||
152 | the hrtimer implementation details in praxis, and we also ran the posix | ||
153 | timer tests in order to ensure specification compliance. We also ran | ||
154 | tests on low-resolution clocks. | ||
155 | |||
156 | The hrtimer patch converts the following kernel functionality to use | ||
157 | hrtimers: | ||
158 | |||
159 | - nanosleep | ||
160 | - itimers | ||
161 | - posix-timers | ||
162 | |||
163 | The conversion of nanosleep and posix-timers enabled the unification of | ||
164 | nanosleep and clock_nanosleep. | ||
165 | |||
166 | The code was successfully compiled for the following platforms: | ||
167 | |||
168 | i386, x86_64, ARM, PPC, PPC64, IA64 | ||
169 | |||
170 | The code was run-tested on the following platforms: | ||
171 | |||
172 | i386(UP/SMP), x86_64(UP/SMP), ARM, PPC | ||
173 | |||
174 | hrtimers were also integrated into the -rt tree, along with a | ||
175 | hrtimers-based high-resolution clock implementation, so the hrtimers | ||
176 | code got a healthy amount of testing and use in practice. | ||
177 | |||
178 | Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar | ||