From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753316AbbDBDgm (ORCPT ); Wed, 1 Apr 2015 23:36:42 -0400 Received: from mail-pd0-f169.google.com ([209.85.192.169]:36573 "EHLO mail-pd0-f169.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752997AbbDBDfK (ORCPT ); Wed, 1 Apr 2015 23:35:10 -0400 From: John Stultz To: lkml Cc: John Stultz , Ingo Molnar , Thomas Gleixner , Peter Zijlstra , Prarit Bhargava , Richard Cochran Subject: [PATCH 19/21] clocksource: Improve comment explaining clocks_calc_max_nsecs()'s 50% safety margin Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2015 20:34:39 -0700 Message-Id: <1427945681-29972-20-git-send-email-john.stultz@linaro.org> X-Mailer: git-send-email 1.9.1 In-Reply-To: <1427945681-29972-1-git-send-email-john.stultz@linaro.org> References: <1427945681-29972-1-git-send-email-john.stultz@linaro.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Ingo noted that the description of clocks_calc_max_nsecs()'s 50% safety margin was somewhat circular. So this patch tries to improve the comment to better explain what we mean by the 50% safety margin and why we need it. Cc: Ingo Molnar Cc: Thomas Gleixner Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Prarit Bhargava Cc: Richard Cochran Signed-off-by: John Stultz --- kernel/time/clocksource.c | 7 +++++-- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/kernel/time/clocksource.c b/kernel/time/clocksource.c index c3be3c7..15facb1 100644 --- a/kernel/time/clocksource.c +++ b/kernel/time/clocksource.c @@ -472,8 +472,11 @@ static u32 clocksource_max_adjustment(struct clocksource *cs) * @max_cyc: maximum cycle value before potential overflow (does not include * any safety margin) * - * NOTE: This function includes a safety margin of 50%, so that bad clock values - * can be detected. + * NOTE: This function includes a safety margin of 50%, in other words, we + * return half the number of nanoseconds the hardware counter can technically + * cover. This is done so that we can potentially detect problems caused by + * delayed timers or bad hardware, which might result in time intervals that + * are larger then what the math used can handle without overflows. */ u64 clocks_calc_max_nsecs(u32 mult, u32 shift, u32 maxadj, u64 mask, u64 *max_cyc) { -- 1.9.1