[PATCH v6 0/6] ARM: vdso gettimeofday using generic timer architecture

[Nathan Lynch]

On 04/23/2014 02:45 PM, Stephen Boyd wrote:
> On 04/22/14 17:48, Nathan Lynch wrote:
>> Provide fast userspace implementations of gettimeofday and
>> clock_gettime on systems that implement the generic timers extension
>> defined in ARMv7.  This follows the example of arm64 in conception but
>> significantly differs in some aspects of the implementation (C vs
>> assembly, mainly).
>>
>> Clocks supported:
>> - CLOCK_REALTIME
>> - CLOCK_MONOTONIC
>> - CLOCK_REALTIME_COARSE
>> - CLOCK_MONOTONIC_COARSE
>>
>> This also provides clock_getres (as arm64 does).
>>
>> Note that while the high-precision realtime and monotonic clock
>> support depends on the generic timers extension, support for
>> clock_getres and coarse clocks is independent of the timer
>> implementation and is provided unconditionally.
> 
> I think we'll need to rename the clocksource in arch_timer.c if we only
> have an mmio architected timer to something like arch_mem_counter.

I guess ARMv7 would allow you to have mmio without cp15 (AFAIK ARMv8
does not).  I don't see any dts in arch/arm that contains an
arm,armv7-timer-mem node without an arm,armv7-timer node, though.

If this is a practical concern, I think using
CONFIG_ARCH_CLOCKSOURCE_DATA is perhaps a better way to communicate
whether cp15 access is available.  That's how the x86 vdso, for example,
decides between using HPET vs TSC etc.