Re: [PATCH] arm: kernel: utilize hrtimer based broadcast

[Yang Li]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 3:46 AM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 2 Jan 2016, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 02:54:10PM +0100, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > > I have no real opinion about that patch. It does no harm to unconditionally
> > > setup the hrtimer based broadcast even if it's never used.
> > >
> > > Up to the arch maintainer to decide.
> >
> > That's really not fair to keep shovelling these kinds of decisions onto
> > architecture maintainers without any kind of explanation about how an
> > architecture maintainer should make such a decision.
> >
> > Do I roll a 6-face dice, and if it gives an odd number, I apply this
> > patch, otherwise I reject it?
> >
> > Is there a technical basis for making the decision?  If so, please
> > explain what the technical arguments are against having or not having
> > this change.
>
> The hrtimer based broadcast device is used when you have per cpu timers which
> stop in deeper power states, but you have no other timer hardware on the chip
> which can backup the per cpu timer in deep power states. The trick is that it
> emulates a timer hardware via a hrtimer and then tells the cpu idle code not
> to go into deep power states on the cpu which owns that hrtimer. All other
> cpus can go as deep as they want and still get woken up.
>
> The only downside of adding this unconditionally is extra code in case that it
> is not needed on a particular platform.
>
> Hope that helps.

Hi Russell,

This has been pending for so long time.  I assume this is an ack from
Thomas.  And given the same thing has been added for arm64 and powerpc
architecture, can you also merge this for ARM?


Regards,
Leo