x86: set X86_FEATURE_TSC_RELIABLE

If the TSC is constant and non-stop, also set it reliable.

(We will turn this off in DMI quirks for multi-chassis systems)

The performance number on a 16-way Nehalem system running
32 tasks that context-switch between each other is significant:

   sched_clock_stable=0		sched_clock_stable=1
   ....................         ....................
   22.456925 million/sec        24.306972 million/sec   [+8.2%]

lmbench's "lat_ctx -s 0 2" goes from 0.63 microseconds to
0.59 microseconds - a 6.7% increase in context-switching
performance.

Perfstat of 1 million pipe context switches between two tasks:

 Performance counter stats for './pipe-test-1m':

       [before]           [after]
   ............      ............
   37621.421089      36436.848378    task clock ticks     (msecs)

              0                 0    CPU migrations       (events)
        2000274           2000189    context switches     (events)
            194               193    pagefaults           (events)
     8433799643        8171016416    CPU cycles           (events) -3.21%
     8370133368        8180999694    instructions         (events) -2.31%
        4158565           3895941    cache references     (events) -6.74%
          44312             46264    cache misses         (events)

    2349.287976       2279.362465    wall-time            (msecs)  -3.06%

The speedup comes straight from the reduction in the instruction
count. sched_clock_cpu() got simpler and the whole workload thus
executes faster.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/intel.c b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/intel.c
index 24ff26a..5fff00c 100644 (file)
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/intel.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/intel.c
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
 #include <linux/string.h>
 #include <linux/bitops.h>
 #include <linux/smp.h>
+#include <linux/sched.h>
 #include <linux/thread_info.h>
 #include <linux/module.h>
 
@@ -56,11 +57,16 @@ static void __cpuinit early_init_intel(struct cpuinfo_x86 *c)
 
        /*
         * c->x86_power is 8000_0007 edx. Bit 8 is TSC runs at constant rate
-        * with P/T states and does not stop in deep C-states
+        * with P/T states and does not stop in deep C-states.
+        *
+        * It is also reliable across cores and sockets. (but not across
+        * cabinets - we turn it off in that case explicitly.)
         */
        if (c->x86_power & (1 << 8)) {
                set_cpu_cap(c, X86_FEATURE_CONSTANT_TSC);
                set_cpu_cap(c, X86_FEATURE_NONSTOP_TSC);
+               set_cpu_cap(c, X86_FEATURE_TSC_RELIABLE);
+               sched_clock_stable = 1;
        }
 
 }