[ntp:questions] Re: linux system clock egregiously slow!

David Wuertele dave-gnus at bfnet.com
Wed Jan 21 18:06:49 UTC 2004


Thank you very much for the advice.

DLM> You might be able to discipline the TOY chip, but I bet it
DLM> counts only the seconds, which would also be a showstopper.

Yes, the board RTC chip only counts seconds.  Is there some reason I
can't use it to discipline the kernel clock?

DLM> And, surely you don't want the shared memory driver if the TOY
DLM> chip can be read directly via a register.

Yes, I realized that as soon as I started actually writing a reference
clock driver, which turned out to be really easy. :-)

DLM> Your code suggests MIPS has a process cycle counter

Yes.

DLM> If it does have a PCC and the jitter.c program shows no
DLM> discontinuity, rejoice; the 800-PPM lurch is probably due to a
DLM> broken initialization constant cycles_per_jiffy.

Ah.  cycles_per_jiffy = mips_counter_frequency / HZ;
And  mips_counter_frequency is set as follows:

0.  turn off interrupts
1.  make sure the MIPS real-time clock is running
2.  store the 32-bit number "270,000,000" (ten seconds) into countdown
    timer #5 
3.  store zero into the program cycle counter
4.  loop while timer #5 > 270,000,000 minus 2,700,000 (.1 seconds)
5.  read back the program cycle counter: that is the number of cycles
    in .1 seconds

mips_counter_frequency = (number of cycles in .1 seconds) * 10

How does this rate as far as getting a correct cycles_per_jiffy?  My
crystal is spec'd accurate to 30PPM, so it seems like my
cycles_per_jiffy should be pretty close to 30PPM, right?

Dave



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