Hello, I wonder if anyone has thought about how to implement the hwtimer arch-specific parts for a cpu where there are multiple timers that run individually?
I am working on a port for the Freescale Kinetis K60 CPU which has the following abilities:
4 hardware programmable interrupt timers, each with the following properties:
- Fixed frequency (48 MHz in my application) - Down counting (easily reversed in software by subtracting the current time from the target time) - Interrupts are called when the counter value reaches zero. - Counter register represents how much time remains until the interrupt is triggered. - Non-writable counter register - Changing the counter value can be acheived by disabling the timer, setting a new load value, starting the timer. NOTE: The timer will be reset to the new load value.
The problems I have are the following:
hwtimer_now(): Difficult to implement since it is expected that the timer is increasing, and because of the method of setting the interrupt time the counter value will only be reflecting how far along the current countdown we are. I.E. calling hwtimer_set() on my CPU is equivalent to calling timer_reset(HWTIMER) immediately followed by hwtimer_set(); on the STM32's for example.
hwtimer_set_absolute(): There is no absolute reference in this situation.
Below are the possible solutions I have been thinking about:
Dedicating (wasting) one timer to act as absolute counter. This involves setting the timeout to 0xffffffff during hwtimer_init() and using this dedicated timer for hwtimer_now() calls and count backwards from hwtimer_now() when dealing with hwtimer_set_absolute().
Pros: Works with ps, scheduler statistics, vtimer with a slight precision loss since some microsecond might be wasted computing the actual desired delay from hwtimer_now() and the argument to hwtimer_set_absolute()
Cons: Wastes one timer channel for a dumb counter, counter will still overflow after only 89 seconds (?) if running at 48 Mhz compared to 71 minutes if counting at 1 MHz.
Dedicating two timers for absolute counter. Same as above, except use timer hardware chaining available in the CPU to get one large 64 bit 48 MHz counter instead.
Making hwtimer_now() always return zero. This will have a negative impact on scheduling statistics, as well as the vtimer library.
Ignoring the problem and letting hwtimer_now() jump about. This will probably break the vtimer library.
What would be my best approach in this scenario?
Best regards, Joakim Gebart Software and Hardware Engineer Eistec AB
Aurorum 1C 977 75 Luleå Tel: +46(0)70-570 66 35 joakim.gebart@eistec.se www.eistec.se