The AMU counter AMEVCNTR01 (constant counter) should increment at the same
rate as the system counter. On affected Cortex-A510 cores, AMEVCNTR01
increments incorrectly giving a significantly higher output value. This
results in inaccurate task scheduler utilization tracking and incorrect
feedback on CPU frequency.
Work around this problem by returning 0 when reading the affected counter
in key locations that results in disabling all users of this counter from
using it either for frequency invariance or as FFH reference counter. This
effect is the same to firmware disabling affected counters.
Details on how the two features are affected by this erratum:
- AMU counters will not be used for frequency invariance for affected
CPUs and CPUs in the same cpufreq policy. AMUs can still be used for
frequency invariance for unaffected CPUs in the system. Although
unlikely, if no alternative method can be found to support frequency
invariance for affected CPUs (cpufreq based or solution based on
platform counters) frequency invariance will be disabled. Please check
the chapter on frequency invariance at
Documentation/scheduler/sched-capacity.rst for details of its effect.
- Given that FFH can be used to fetch either the core or constant counter
values, restrictions are lifted regarding any of these counters
returning a valid (!0) value. Therefore FFH is considered supported
if there is a least one CPU that support AMUs, independent of any
counters being disabled or affected by this erratum. Clarifying
comments are now added to the cpc_ffh_supported(), cpu_read_constcnt()
and cpu_read_corecnt() functions.
The above is achieved through adding a new erratum: ARM64_ERRATUM_2457168.
Signed-off-by: Ionela Voinescu <ionela.voinescu@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Cc: James Morse <james.morse@arm.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220819103050.24211-1-ionela.voinescu@arm.com
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>