Re: [PATCH v3 37/41] x86/kvmclock: Use TSC for sched_clock if it's constant and non-stop

[Dongli Zhang]

On 2026-05-15 12:19 PM, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> Prefer the TSC over kvmclock for sched_clock if the TSC is constant,
> nonstop, and not marked unstable via command line.  I.e. use the same
> criteria as tweaking the clocksource rating so that TSC is preferred over
> kvmclock.  Per the below comment from native_sched_clock(), sched_clock
> is more tolerant of slop than clocksource; using TSC for clocksource but
> not sched_clock makes little to no sense, especially now that KVM CoCo
> guests with a trusted TSC use TSC, not kvmclock.
> 
>         /*
>          * Fall back to jiffies if there's no TSC available:
>          * ( But note that we still use it if the TSC is marked
>          *   unstable. We do this because unlike Time Of Day,
>          *   the scheduler clock tolerates small errors and it's
>          *   very important for it to be as fast as the platform
>          *   can achieve it. )
>          */
> 
> The only advantage of using kvmclock is that doing so allows for early
> and common detection of PVCLOCK_GUEST_STOPPED, but that code has been
> broken for over two years with nary a complaint, i.e. it can't be
> _that_ valuable.  And as above, certain types of KVM guests are losing
> the functionality regardless, i.e. acknowledging PVCLOCK_GUEST_STOPPED
> needs to be decoupled from sched_clock() no matter what.

Has it been broken for two years because of pvclock_clocksource_read_nowd()?

Thank you very much!

Dongli Zhang