Thread (80 messages) 80 messages, 5 authors, 18d ago
COLD18d

[PATCH v6 03/51] x86/tsc: Ensure that TSC recalibration doesn't run if TSC frequency is known

From: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
Date: 2026-08-06 23:36:29
Also in: kvm, linux-coco, lkml, virtualization, xen-devel
Subsystem: the rest, x86 architecture (32-bit and 64-bit) · Maintainers: Linus Torvalds, Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar, Borislav Petkov, Dave Hansen

When attempting TSC recalibration post-boot, which is only done for ancient
CPUS (P4 and K7) on SMP=n kernels, assert that the TSC frequency isn't
known (explicitly provided by hardware) by way of MSR or CPUID, and bail if
the impossible happens.  In practice, recalibration and TSC_KNOWN_FREQ are
mutually exclusive, as TSC_KNOWN_FREQ will only be set when running on
hardware that was released decades after recalibration was obsoleted, but
but it's hard to see that, especially when looking at just the TSC code.

Note, the WARN can likely be tripped by running in a virtual machine and
concocting an impossible CPU model, e.g. by combining a P4 signature with
CPUID 0x15.  This is working as intended, as such a virtual CPU model is
wildly out-of-spec and is not supported.

Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
---
 arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c | 3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c b/arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c
index 4392fddd616e..bc4348585194 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/tsc.c
@@ -930,6 +930,9 @@ void recalibrate_cpu_khz(void)
 	if (!boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_TSC))
 		return;
 
+	if (WARN_ON_ONCE(cpu_feature_enabled(X86_FEATURE_TSC_KNOWN_FREQ)))
+		return;
+
 	cpu_khz = x86_platform.calibrate_cpu();
 	tsc_khz = x86_platform.calibrate_tsc();
 	if (tsc_khz == 0)
-- 
2.55.0.679.g6767b8d81c-goog
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