I want to keep get_cycles() as a very fast primitive useful for benchmarking
etc. and the random device. Accessing the southbridge would make it magnitudes
slower.
Regarding the watchdog: what it basically wants is a POSIX
CLOCK_MONOTONIC clock. This isn't currently implemented by Linux,
but I expect it will be eventually because it's really useful for a lot
of applications who just need an increasing time stamp in user space,
and who do not want to fight ntpd for this. One example for such
an application is the X server who needs this for its internal
event sequencing.
Implementing it based on the current time infrastructure is very easy -
you just do not add xtime and wall jiffies in, but only jiffies.
I don't think doing any special hacks and complicating get_cycles()
for it is the right way. Just implement a new monotonic clock primitive
(and eventually export it to user space too)
-Andi
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