The NMI watchdog uses either the fixed cycles or a generic cycles
counter. This causes a lot of conflicts with users of the PMU who want
to run a full group including the cycles fixed counter, for example
the --topdown support recently added to perf stat. The code needs to
fall back to not use groups, which can cause measurement inaccuracy
due to multiplexing errors.

This patch switches the NMI watchdog to use reference cycles
on Intel systems.  This is actually more accurate than cycles,
because cycles can tick faster than the measured CPU Frequency
due to Turbo mode.

The ref cycles always tick at their frequency, or slower when
the system is idling. That means the NMI watchdog can never
expire too early, unlike with cycles.

The reference cycles tick roughly at the frequency of the TSC,
so the same period computation can be used.
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Stephane Eranian <eranian@google.com>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Vince Weaver <vincent.weaver@maine.edu>
Cc: acme@kernel.org
Cc: jolsa@kernel.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1465478079-19993-1-git-send-email-andi@firstfloor.orgSigned-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>