[PATCH 0/1] Switch to jiffies for native_sched_clock() when TSC warps

[Chase Douglas]

I took a look at the x86 code handling the clock to see what could be done
about the TSC warping coming out of resume on some of the newer processors. The
code includes a built-in fallback path that uses the jiffies count instead of
the TSC register if "notsc" is used on the command line. This patch merely sets
this option at runtime if two TSC time stamps differ by more than 6 years.

I'm sending this here first because I've not touched clocking code before. I'm
not sure whether this is a feasible approach, and I would like feedback. Note
that the TSC warping hasn't caused any noticeable issues beyond triggering some
oops messages, so even if there's some skew in the switch from TSC to jiffies
it should hopefully not cause too much of an issue.

The only truly negative outcome I foresee is that the clock won't be stable on
a single CPU. Programs needing accurate clock timing can pin themselves to a
single CPU in order to get TSC time stamps that are monotonic and accurate (The
TSC register is per cpu, and there may be skew between CPUs). However, if the
TSC has warped we are beyond that point anyways. If you have a warping
processor you should run with notsc if you care about accuracy, even though
precision would be reduced.