Since commit db3a34e1 ("clocksource: Retry clock read if long delays
detected") and commit 2e27e793 ("clocksource: Reduce clocksource-skew
threshold"), it is found that tsc clocksource fallback to hpet can
sometimes happen on both Intel and AMD systems especially when they are
running stressful benchmarking workloads. Of the 23 systems tested with
a v5.14 kernel, 10 of them have switched to hpet clock source during
the test run.

The result of falling back to hpet is a drastic reduction of performance
when running benchmarks. For example, the fio performance tests can
drop up to 70% whereas the iperf3 performance can drop up to 80%.

4 hpet fallbacks happened during bootup. They were:

  [    8.749399] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU13: hpet read-back delay of 263750ns, attempt 4, marking unstable
  [   12.044610] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU19: hpet read-back delay of 186166ns, attempt 4, marking unstable
  [   17.336941] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU28: hpet read-back delay of 182291ns, attempt 4, marking unstable
  [   17.518565] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU34: hpet read-back delay of 252196ns, attempt 4, marking unstable

Other fallbacks happen when the systems were running stressful
benchmarks. For example:

  [ 2685.867873] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU117: hpet read-back delay of 57269ns, attempt 4, marking unstable
  [46215.471228] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU8: hpet read-back delay of 61460ns, attempt 4, marking unstable

Commit 2e27e793 ("clocksource: Reduce clocksource-skew threshold"),
changed the skew margin from 100us to 50us. I think this is too small
and can easily be exceeded when running some stressful workloads on a
thermally stressed system.  So it is switched back to 100us.

Even a maximum skew margin of 100us may be too small in for some systems
when booting up especially if those systems are under thermal stress. To
eliminate the case that the large skew is due to the system being too
busy slowing down the reading of both the watchdog and the clocksource,
an extra consecutive read of watchdog clock is being done to check this.

The consecutive watchdog read delay is compared against
WATCHDOG_MAX_SKEW/2. If the delay exceeds the limit, we assume that
the system is just too busy. A warning will be printed to the console
and the clock skew check is skipped for this round.

Fixes: db3a34e1 ("clocksource: Retry clock read if long delays detected")
Fixes: 2e27e793 ("clocksource: Reduce clocksource-skew threshold")
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>