Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 01/47] x86/tsc: Never re-calibrate TSC frequency if its exact timing is known

From: Thomas Gleixner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:33:34 +0200

On Fri, May 29 2026 at 07:43, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> Don't re-calibrate the TSC frequency if the TSC is known to run at a fixed
> frequency.

That's misleading because fixed frequency means that the frequency does
not change, i.e. X86_FEATURE_CONSTANT_TSC is set. But
X86_FEATURE_CONSTANT_TSC does not imply that the frequency can be read
from CPUID/MSRs.

> In practice, this is likely one big nop, as re-calibration is
> used only for SMP=n kernels, and only for hardware that is 20+ years old,
> i.e. is extremely unlikely to collide with TSC_KNOWN_FREQ.

recalibrate_cpu_khz() is only invoked from Intel P4 and AMD K7 CPU
frequency drivers, which means that's absolutely not interesting and
neither X86_FEATURE_CONSTANT_TSC nor X86_FEATURE_TSC_KNOWN_FREQ can be
set on those systems.

IOW, this patch is pointless voodoo ware.

Thanks,

        tglx