Another representative use case of time sync and the correlated
clocksource (in addition to PTP noted above) is PTP synchronized
audio.
In a streaming application, as an example, samples will be sent and/or
received by multiple devices with a presentation time that is in terms
of the PTP master clock. Synchronizing the audio output on these
devices requires correlating the audio clock with the PTP master
clock. The more precise this correlation is, the better the audio
quality (i.e. out of sync audio sounds bad).
From an application standpoint, to correlate the PTP master clock with
the audio device clock, the system clock is used as a intermediate
timebase. The transforms such an application would perform are:
System Clock <-> Audio clock
System Clock <-> Network Device Clock [<-> PTP Master Clock]
Modern Intel platforms can perform a more accurate cross timestamp in
hardware (ART,audio device clock). The audio driver requires
ART->system time transforms -- the same as required for the network
driver. These platforms offload audio processing (including
cross-timestamps) to a DSP which to ensure uninterrupted audio
processing, communicates and response to the host only once every
millsecond. As a result is takes up to a millisecond for the DSP to
receive a request, the request is processed by the DSP, the audio
output hardware is polled for completion, the result is copied into
shared memory, and the host is notified. All of these operation occur
on a millisecond cadence. This transaction requires about 2 ms, but
under heavier workloads it may take up to 4 ms.
Adding a history allows these slow devices the option of providing an
ART value outside of the current interval. In this case, the callback
provided is an accessor function for the previously obtained counter
value. If get_system_device_crosststamp() receives a counter value
previous to cycle_last, it consults the history provided as an
argument in history_ref and interpolates the realtime and monotonic
raw system time using the provided counter value. If there are any
clock discontinuities, e.g. from calling settimeofday(), the monotonic
raw time is interpolated in the usual way, but the realtime clock time
is adjusted by scaling the monotonic raw adjustment.
When an accessor function is used a history argument *must* be
provided. The history is initialized using ktime_get_snapshot() and
must be called before the counter values are read.
Cc: Prarit Bhargava <prarit@redhat.com>
Cc: Richard Cochran <richardcochran@gmail.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: kevin.b.stanton@intel.com
Cc: kevin.j.clarke@intel.com
Cc: hpa@zytor.com
Cc: jeffrey.t.kirsher@intel.com
Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Christopher S. Hall <christopher.s.hall@intel.com>
[jstultz: Fixed up cycles_t/cycle_t type confusion]
Signed-off-by: John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>
2c756feb18