[PATCH] ARM: Don't ever downscale loops_per_jiffy in SMP systems

[Doug Anderson]

Nicolas,

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Nicolas Pitre <nicolas.pitre at linaro.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 8 May 2014, Doug Anderson wrote:

>> Longer delays aren't very good, but IMHO having some delays of 100 =>
>> 1000 is better than having delays of 100 => 75.  The former will cause
>> mostly performance problems and the later will cause real correctness
>> problems.
>> I'm not saying that 100 => 1000 is good, it's just less bad.
>
> There might be some cases where precise timing is needed though.
> I thought I came across one such case in the past but I can't remember
> which.

If precise timing is needed, shouldn't it be using ktime?


>> I will make the argument that this patch makes things less broken
>> overall on any systems that actually end up running this code, but if
>> you want NAK it then it won't cause me any heartache.  ;)
>
> What I insist on is for this issue to be solved using a stable counter
> such a timer when available.  It _is_ available on one of the target you
> mentioned so that is the solution you should add to your tree.

Yup, we're working on it.


> Investigating a similar solution for your other target should be
> preferred to hacking the udelay loop. This way you're guaranteed to
> solve this problem fully.

I have no other target in mind.  I'm merely sending this up there just
in case there is some cpufreq running ARM board that is SMP and has no
timer-based udelay.  Those are the only boards that could possibly be
running this code anyway.

I guess I would say that my patch is unhacking the this code.  The
code after my patch is simpler.  I would perhaps argue that (ec971ea
ARM: add cpufreq transiton notifier to adjust loops_per_jiffy for smp)
should never have landed to begin with.

-Doug