Subject: Improving accuracy of PHC readings

From: Miroslav Lichvar <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2018 11:51:37 +0200

I think there might be a way how we could significantly improve
accuracy of synchronization between the system clock and a PTP
hardware clock, at least with some network drivers.

Currently, the PTP_SYS_OFFSET ioctl reads the system clock, reads the
PHC using the gettime64 function of the driver, and reads the system
clock again. The ioctl can repeat this to provide multiple readings to
the user space.

phc2sys (or another program synchronizing the system clock to the PHC)
assumes the PHC timestamps were captured in the middle between the two
closest system clock timestamps.

The trouble is that gettime64 typically reads multiple (2-3) registers
and the timestamp is latched on the first one, so the assumption about
middle point is wrong. There is an asymmetry, even if the delays on
the PCIe bus are perfectly symmetric.

A solution to this would be a new driver function that wraps the
latching register read with readings of the system clock and return
three timestamps instead of one. For example:

        ktime_get_real_ts64(&sys_ts1);
	IXGBE_READ_REG(hw, IXGBE_SYSTIMR);
	ktime_get_real_ts64(&sys_ts2);
	phc_ts.tv_nsec = IXGBE_READ_REG(hw, IXGBE_SYSTIML);
	phc_ts.tv_sec = IXGBE_READ_REG(hw, IXGBE_SYSTIMH);
 
The extra timestamp doesn't fit the API of the PTP_SYS_OFFSET ioctl,
so it would need to shift the timestamp it returns by the missing
intervals (assuming the frequency offset between the PHC and system
clock is small), or a new ioctl could be introduced that would return
all timestamps in an array looking like this:

	[sys, phc, sys, sys, phc, sys, ...]

This should significantly improve the accuracy of the synchronization,
reduce the uncertainty in the readings to less than a half or third,
and also reduce the jitter as there are fewer register reads sensitive
to the PCIe delay.

What do you think?

-- 
Miroslav Lichvar