[PATCH] hrtimer: hrtimer documentation

add hrtimer docbook and design document

Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 178 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/hrtimers.txt b/Documentation/hrtimers.txt
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+
+hrtimers - subsystem for high-resolution kernel timers
+----------------------------------------------------
+
+This patch introduces a new subsystem for high-resolution kernel timers.
+
+One might ask the question: we already have a timer subsystem
+(kernel/timers.c), why do we need two timer subsystems? After a lot of
+back and forth trying to integrate high-resolution and high-precision
+features into the existing timer framework, and after testing various
+such high-resolution timer implementations in practice, we came to the
+conclusion that the timer wheel code is fundamentally not suitable for
+such an approach. We initially didnt believe this ('there must be a way
+to solve this'), and spent a considerable effort trying to integrate
+things into the timer wheel, but we failed. In hindsight, there are
+several reasons why such integration is hard/impossible:
+
+- the forced handling of low-resolution and high-resolution timers in
+  the same way leads to a lot of compromises, macro magic and #ifdef
+  mess. The timers.c code is very "tightly coded" around jiffies and
+  32-bitness assumptions, and has been honed and micro-optimized for a
+  relatively narrow use case (jiffies in a relatively narrow HZ range)
+  for many years - and thus even small extensions to it easily break
+  the wheel concept, leading to even worse compromises. The timer wheel
+  code is very good and tight code, there's zero problems with it in its
+  current usage - but it is simply not suitable to be extended for
+  high-res timers.
+
+- the unpredictable [O(N)] overhead of cascading leads to delays which
+  necessiate a more complex handling of high resolution timers, which
+  in turn decreases robustness. Such a design still led to rather large
+  timing inaccuracies. Cascading is a fundamental property of the timer
+  wheel concept, it cannot be 'designed out' without unevitably
+  degrading other portions of the timers.c code in an unacceptable way.
+
+- the implementation of the current posix-timer subsystem on top of
+  the timer wheel has already introduced a quite complex handling of
+  the required readjusting of absolute CLOCK_REALTIME timers at
+  settimeofday or NTP time - further underlying our experience by
+  example: that the timer wheel data structure is too rigid for high-res
+  timers.
+
+- the timer wheel code is most optimal for use cases which can be
+  identified as "timeouts". Such timeouts are usually set up to cover
+  error conditions in various I/O paths, such as networking and block
+  I/O. The vast majority of those timers never expire and are rarely
+  recascaded because the expected correct event arrives in time so they
+  can be removed from the timer wheel before any further processing of
+  them becomes necessary. Thus the users of these timeouts can accept
+  the granularity and precision tradeoffs of the timer wheel, and
+  largely expect the timer subsystem to have near-zero overhead.
+  Accurate timing for them is not a core purpose - in fact most of the
+  timeout values used are ad-hoc. For them it is at most a necessary
+  evil to guarantee the processing of actual timeout completions
+  (because most of the timeouts are deleted before completion), which
+  should thus be as cheap and unintrusive as possible.
+
+The primary users of precision timers are user-space applications that
+utilize nanosleep, posix-timers and itimer interfaces. Also, in-kernel
+users like drivers and subsystems which require precise timed events
+(e.g. multimedia) can benefit from the availability of a seperate
+high-resolution timer subsystem as well.
+
+While this subsystem does not offer high-resolution clock sources just
+yet, the hrtimer subsystem can be easily extended with high-resolution
+clock capabilities, and patches for that exist and are maturing quickly.
+The increasing demand for realtime and multimedia applications along
+with other potential users for precise timers gives another reason to
+separate the "timeout" and "precise timer" subsystems.
+
+Another potential benefit is that such a seperation allows even more
+special-purpose optimization of the existing timer wheel for the low
+resolution and low precision use cases - once the precision-sensitive
+APIs are separated from the timer wheel and are migrated over to
+hrtimers. E.g. we could decrease the frequency of the timeout subsystem
+from 250 Hz to 100 HZ (or even smaller).
+
+hrtimer subsystem implementation details
+----------------------------------------
+
+the basic design considerations were:
+
+- simplicity
+
+- data structure not bound to jiffies or any other granularity. All the
+  kernel logic works at 64-bit nanoseconds resolution - no compromises.
+
+- simplification of existing, timing related kernel code
+
+another basic requirement was the immediate enqueueing and ordering of
+timers at activation time. After looking at several possible solutions
+such as radix trees and hashes, we chose the red black tree as the basic
+data structure. Rbtrees are available as a library in the kernel and are
+used in various performance-critical areas of e.g. memory management and
+file systems. The rbtree is solely used for time sorted ordering, while
+a separate list is used to give the expiry code fast access to the
+queued timers, without having to walk the rbtree.
+
+(This seperate list is also useful for later when we'll introduce
+high-resolution clocks, where we need seperate pending and expired
+queues while keeping the time-order intact.)
+
+Time-ordered enqueueing is not purely for the purposes of
+high-resolution clocks though, it also simplifies the handling of
+absolute timers based on a low-resolution CLOCK_REALTIME. The existing
+implementation needed to keep an extra list of all armed absolute
+CLOCK_REALTIME timers along with complex locking. In case of
+settimeofday and NTP, all the timers (!) had to be dequeued, the
+time-changing code had to fix them up one by one, and all of them had to
+be enqueued again. The time-ordered enqueueing and the storage of the
+expiry time in absolute time units removes all this complex and poorly
+scaling code from the posix-timer implementation - the clock can simply
+be set without having to touch the rbtree. This also makes the handling
+of posix-timers simpler in general.
+
+The locking and per-CPU behavior of hrtimers was mostly taken from the
+existing timer wheel code, as it is mature and well suited. Sharing code
+was not really a win, due to the different data structures. Also, the
+hrtimer functions now have clearer behavior and clearer names - such as
+hrtimer_try_to_cancel() and hrtimer_cancel() [which are roughly
+equivalent to del_timer() and del_timer_sync()] - so there's no direct
+1:1 mapping between them on the algorithmical level, and thus no real
+potential for code sharing either.
+
+Basic data types: every time value, absolute or relative, is in a
+special nanosecond-resolution type: ktime_t. The kernel-internal
+representation of ktime_t values and operations is implemented via
+macros and inline functions, and can be switched between a "hybrid
+union" type and a plain "scalar" 64bit nanoseconds representation (at
+compile time). The hybrid union type optimizes time conversions on 32bit
+CPUs. This build-time-selectable ktime_t storage format was implemented
+to avoid the performance impact of 64-bit multiplications and divisions
+on 32bit CPUs. Such operations are frequently necessary to convert
+between the storage formats provided by kernel and userspace interfaces
+and the internal time format. (See include/linux/ktime.h for further
+details.)
+
+hrtimers - rounding of timer values
+-----------------------------------
+
+the hrtimer code will round timer events to lower-resolution clocks
+because it has to. Otherwise it will do no artificial rounding at all.
+
+one question is, what resolution value should be returned to the user by
+the clock_getres() interface. This will return whatever real resolution
+a given clock has - be it low-res, high-res, or artificially-low-res.
+
+hrtimers - testing and verification
+----------------------------------
+
+We used the high-resolution clock subsystem ontop of hrtimers to verify
+the hrtimer implementation details in praxis, and we also ran the posix
+timer tests in order to ensure specification compliance. We also ran
+tests on low-resolution clocks.
+
+The hrtimer patch converts the following kernel functionality to use
+hrtimers:
+
+ - nanosleep
+ - itimers
+ - posix-timers
+
+The conversion of nanosleep and posix-timers enabled the unification of
+nanosleep and clock_nanosleep.
+
+The code was successfully compiled for the following platforms:
+
+ i386, x86_64, ARM, PPC, PPC64, IA64
+
+The code was run-tested on the following platforms:
+
+ i386(UP/SMP), x86_64(UP/SMP), ARM, PPC
+
+hrtimers were also integrated into the -rt tree, along with a
+hrtimers-based high-resolution clock implementation, so the hrtimers
+code got a healthy amount of testing and use in practice.
+
+	Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar