linux/kernel/time
Linus Torvalds 02dc9d15d7 Updates for the timekeeping and VDSO code:
- Introduce support for auxiliary timekeepers
 
       PTP clocks can be disconnected from the universal CLOCK_TAI reality
       for various reasons including regularatory requirements for
       functional safety redundancy.
 
       The kernel so far only supports a single notion of time, which means
       that all clocks are correlated in frequency and only differ by
       offset to each other.
 
       Access to non-correlated PTP clocks has been available so far only
       through the file descriptor based "POSIX clock IDs", which are
       subject to locking and have to go all the way out to the hardware.
 
       The access is not only horribly slow, as it has to go all the way out
       to the NIC/PTP hardware, but that also prevents the kernel to read
       the time of such clocks e.g. from the network stack, where it is
       required for TSN networking both on the transmit and receive side
       unless the hardware provides offloading.
 
       The auxiliary clocks provide a mechanism to support arbitrary clocks
       which are not correlated to the system clock. This is not restricted
       to the PTP use case on purpose as there is no kernel side association
       of these clocks to a particular PTP device because that's a pure user
       space configuration decision. Having them independent allows to
       utilize them for other purposes and also enables them to be tested
       without hardware dependencies.
 
       To avoid pointless overhead these clocks have to be enabled
       individualy via a new sysfs interface to reduce the overhead to a
       single compare in the hotpath if they are enabled at the Kconfig
       level at all.
 
       These clocks utilize the existing timekeeping/NTP infrastructures,
       which has been made possible over the recent releases by incrementaly
       converting these infrastructures over from a single static instance
       to a multi-instance pointer based implementation without any
       performance regression reported.
 
       The auxiliary clocks provide the same "emulation" of a "correct"
       clock as the existing CLOCK_* variants do with an independent
       instance of data and provide the same steering mechanism through the
       existing sys_clock_adjtime() interface, which has been confirmed to
       work by the chronyd(8) maintainer.
 
       That allows to provide lockless kernel internal and VDSO support so
       that applications and kernel internal functionalities can access
       these clocks without restrictions and at the same performance as the
       existing system clocks.
 
   - Avoid double notifications in the adjtimex() syscall. Not a big issue,
     but a trivial to avoid latency source.
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Merge tag 'timers-ptp-2025-07-27' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip

Pull timekeeping and VDSO updates from Thomas Gleixner:

 - Introduce support for auxiliary timekeepers

   PTP clocks can be disconnected from the universal CLOCK_TAI reality
   for various reasons including regularatory requirements for
   functional safety redundancy.

   The kernel so far only supports a single notion of time, which means
   that all clocks are correlated in frequency and only differ by offset
   to each other.

   Access to non-correlated PTP clocks has been available so far only
   through the file descriptor based "POSIX clock IDs", which are
   subject to locking and have to go all the way out to the hardware.

   The access is not only horribly slow, as it has to go all the way out
   to the NIC/PTP hardware, but that also prevents the kernel to read
   the time of such clocks e.g. from the network stack, where it is
   required for TSN networking both on the transmit and receive side
   unless the hardware provides offloading.

   The auxiliary clocks provide a mechanism to support arbitrary clocks
   which are not correlated to the system clock. This is not restricted
   to the PTP use case on purpose as there is no kernel side association
   of these clocks to a particular PTP device because that's a pure user
   space configuration decision. Having them independent allows to
   utilize them for other purposes and also enables them to be tested
   without hardware dependencies.

   To avoid pointless overhead these clocks have to be enabled
   individualy via a new sysfs interface to reduce the overhead to a
   single compare in the hotpath if they are enabled at the Kconfig
   level at all.

   These clocks utilize the existing timekeeping/NTP infrastructures,
   which has been made possible over the recent releases by incrementaly
   converting these infrastructures over from a single static instance
   to a multi-instance pointer based implementation without any
   performance regression reported.

   The auxiliary clocks provide the same "emulation" of a "correct"
   clock as the existing CLOCK_* variants do with an independent
   instance of data and provide the same steering mechanism through the
   existing sys_clock_adjtime() interface, which has been confirmed to
   work by the chronyd(8) maintainer.

   That allows to provide lockless kernel internal and VDSO support so
   that applications and kernel internal functionalities can access
   these clocks without restrictions and at the same performance as the
   existing system clocks.

 - Avoid double notifications in the adjtimex() syscall. Not a big
   issue, but a trivial to avoid latency source.

* tag 'timers-ptp-2025-07-27' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: (39 commits)
  vdso/gettimeofday: Add support for auxiliary clocks
  vdso/vsyscall: Update auxiliary clock data in the datapage
  vdso: Introduce aux_clock_resolution_ns()
  vdso/gettimeofday: Introduce vdso_get_timestamp()
  vdso/gettimeofday: Introduce vdso_set_timespec()
  vdso/gettimeofday: Introduce vdso_clockid_valid()
  vdso/gettimeofday: Return bool from clock_gettime() helpers
  vdso/gettimeofday: Return bool from clock_getres() helpers
  vdso/helpers: Add helpers for seqlocks of single vdso_clock
  vdso/vsyscall: Split up __arch_update_vsyscall() into __arch_update_vdso_clock()
  vdso/vsyscall: Introduce a helper to fill clock configurations
  timekeeping: Remove the temporary CLOCK_AUX workaround
  timekeeping: Provide ktime_get_clock_ts64()
  timekeeping: Provide interface to control auxiliary clocks
  timekeeping: Provide update for auxiliary timekeepers
  timekeeping: Provide adjtimex() for auxiliary clocks
  timekeeping: Prepare do_adtimex() for auxiliary clocks
  timekeeping: Make do_adjtimex() reusable
  timekeeping: Add auxiliary clock support to __timekeeping_inject_offset()
  timekeeping: Make timekeeping_inject_offset() reusable
  ...
2025-07-29 14:12:52 -07:00
..
alarmtimer.c alarmtimer: Switch spin_{lock,unlock}_irqsave() to guards 2025-04-30 09:06:23 +02:00
clockevents.c clockevents: Shutdown and unregister current clockevents at CPUHP_AP_TICK_DYING 2024-10-31 10:41:42 +01:00
clocksource-wdtest.c clocksource/wdtest: Print time values for short udelay(1) 2025-01-15 19:49:13 +01:00
clocksource.c clocksource: Use cpumask_next_wrap() in clocksource_watchdog() 2025-06-14 20:09:44 +02:00
hrtimer.c hrtimer: Add missing ACCESS_PRIVATE() for hrtimer::function 2025-04-09 21:00:42 +02:00
itimer.c signal: Confine POSIX_TIMERS properly 2024-10-29 11:43:18 +01:00
jiffies.c time/jiffies: Change register_refined_jiffies() to void __init 2025-04-30 09:06:23 +02:00
Kconfig time: Introduce auxiliary POSIX clocks 2025-06-19 14:28:22 +02:00
Makefile tracing: Disable branch profiling in noinstr code 2025-03-22 09:49:26 +01:00
namespace.c vdso/vsyscall: Update auxiliary clock data in the datapage 2025-07-18 13:45:33 +02:00
ntp.c ntp: Use ktime_get_ntp_seconds() 2025-06-19 14:28:24 +02:00
ntp_internal.h ntp: Rename __do_adjtimex() to ntp_adjtimex() 2025-06-19 14:28:23 +02:00
posix-clock.c Networking changes for 6.15. 2025-03-26 21:48:21 -07:00
posix-cpu-timers.c posix-cpu-timers: fix race between handle_posix_cpu_timers() and posix_cpu_timer_del() 2025-06-13 10:55:49 -07:00
posix-stubs.c posix-timers: Get rid of [COMPAT_]SYS_NI() uses 2023-12-20 21:30:27 -08:00
posix-timers.c timekeeping: Add minimal posix-timers support for auxiliary clocks 2025-06-27 20:13:12 +02:00
posix-timers.h timekeeping: Add minimal posix-timers support for auxiliary clocks 2025-06-27 20:13:12 +02:00
sched_clock.c time: Switch to hrtimer_setup() 2025-02-18 10:32:33 +01:00
sleep_timeout.c treewide, timers: Rename from_timer() to timer_container_of() 2025-06-08 09:07:37 +02:00
test_udelay.c time: Add MODULE_DESCRIPTION() to time test modules 2024-06-03 11:18:50 +02:00
tick-broadcast-hrtimer.c time: Switch to hrtimer_setup() 2025-02-18 10:32:33 +01:00
tick-broadcast.c tick/broadcast: Add kernel-doc for function parameters 2025-01-15 19:49:14 +01:00
tick-common.c timekeeping: Add a lockdep override in tick_freeze() 2025-04-09 22:30:39 +02:00
tick-internal.h clockevents: Shutdown and unregister current clockevents at CPUHP_AP_TICK_DYING 2024-10-31 10:41:42 +01:00
tick-legacy.c timekeeping: remove xtime_update 2020-10-30 21:57:07 +01:00
tick-oneshot.c time: Fix various kernel-doc problems 2023-01-03 11:07:58 +01:00
tick-sched.c time: Switch to hrtimer_setup() 2025-02-18 10:32:33 +01:00
tick-sched.h tick/sched: Fix struct tick_sched doc warnings 2024-04-01 10:36:35 +02:00
time.c time: Fix references to _msecs_to_jiffies() handling of values 2024-10-25 19:50:10 +02:00
time_test.c time: Add MODULE_DESCRIPTION() to time test modules 2024-06-03 11:18:50 +02:00
timeconst.bc time: Add SPDX license identifiers 2018-11-23 11:51:20 +01:00
timeconv.c time: Improve performance of time64_to_tm() 2021-06-24 11:51:59 +02:00
timecounter.c time/timecounter: Fix the lie that struct cyclecounter is const 2025-07-01 15:38:25 +02:00
timekeeping.c Updates for the timekeeping and VDSO code: 2025-07-29 14:12:52 -07:00
timekeeping.h asm-generic: cross-architecture timer cleanup 2020-12-16 00:07:17 -08:00
timekeeping_debug.c timekeeping: Add percpu counter for tracking floor swap events 2024-10-10 10:20:46 +02:00
timekeeping_internal.h timekeeping: Provide ktime_get_ntp_seconds() 2025-06-19 14:28:23 +02:00
timer.c Updates for the time/timer core code: 2025-05-27 09:04:15 -07:00
timer_list.c hrtimers: Make callback function pointer private 2025-04-05 10:30:17 +02:00
timer_migration.c timers/migration: Clean up the loop in tmigr_quick_check() 2025-06-12 21:03:45 +02:00
timer_migration.h timer/migration: Fix kernel-doc warnings for union tmigr_state 2025-01-15 19:49:14 +01:00
vsyscall.c vdso/vsyscall: Update auxiliary clock data in the datapage 2025-07-18 13:45:33 +02:00