In order for ntpd to correctly synchronize the clocks, the frequency of
the system clock must not be off by more than 500 ppm (or, put another
way, 1:2000), or ntpd will end up giving up on trying to synchronize
properly, and ends up reseting the clock in jumps instead.
The fast TSC PIT calibration sometimes failed this test - it was
assuming that the PIT reads always took about one microsecond each (2us
for the two reads to get a 16-bit timer), and that calibrating TSC to
the PIT over 15ms should thus be sufficient to get much closer than
500ppm (max 2us error on both sides giving 4us over 15ms: a 270 ppm
error value).
However, that assumption does not always hold: apparently some hardware
is either very much slower at reading the PIT registers, or there was
other noise causing at least one machine to get 700+ ppm errors.
So instead of using a fixed 15ms timing loop, this changes the fast PIT
calibration to read the TSC delta over the individual PIT timer reads,
and use the result to calculate the error bars on the PIT read timing
properly. We then successfully calibrate the TSC only if the maximum
error bars fall below 500ppm.
In the process, we also relax the timing to allow up to 25ms for the
calibration, although it can happen much faster depending on hardware.
Reported-and-tested-by: Jesper Krogh <jesper@krogh.cc>
Cc: john stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
9e8912e04e