NAME

     hpet — High Precision Event Timer driver

SYNOPSIS

     To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel
     configuration file:

           device acpi

     The following tunables are settable from the loader(8):

     hint.hpet.X.allowed_irqs
     is a 32bit mask.  Each set bit allows driver to use respective IRQ, if BIOS also set
     respective capability bit in comparator's configuration register.  Default value is
     0xffff0000, except some known broken hardware.

     hint.hpet.X.clock
     controls event timers functionality support.  Setting to 0, disables it.  Default value is
     1.

     hint.hpet.X.legacy_route
     controls "LegacyReplacement Route" mode.  If enabled, HPET will steal IRQ0 of i8254 timer
     and IRQ8 of RTC.  Before using it, make sure that respective drivers are not using
     interrupts, by setting also:

     hint.attimer.0.clock=0
     hint.atrtc.0.clock=0
     Default value is 0.

     hint.hpet.X.per_cpu
     controls how much per-CPU event timers should driver attempt to register.  This
     functionality requires every comparator in a group to have own unshared IRQ, so it depends
     on hardware capabilities and interrupts configuration.  Default value is 1.

DESCRIPTION

     This driver uses High Precision Event Timer hardware (part of the chipset, usually
     enumerated via ACPI) to supply kernel with one time counter and several (usually from 3 to
     8) event timers.  This hardware includes single main counter with known increment frequency
     (10MHz or more), and several programmable comparators (optionally with automatic reload
     feature).  When value of the main counter matches current value of any comparator, interrupt
     can be generated.  Depending on hardware capabilities and configuration, interrupt can be
     delivered as regular I/O APIC interrupt (ISA or PCI) in range from 0 to 31, or as Front Side
     Bus interrupt, alike to PCI MSI interrupts, or in so called "LegacyReplacement Route" HPET
     can steal IRQ0 of i8254 and IRQ8 of the RTC.  Interrupt can be either edge- or level-
     triggered.  In last case they could be safely shared with PCI IRQs.  Driver prefers to use
     FSB interrupts, if supported, to avoid sharing.  If it is not possible, it uses single
     sharable IRQ from PCI range.  Other modes (LegacyReplacement and ISA IRQs) require special
     care to setup, but could be configured manually via device hints.

     Event timers provided by the driver support both one-shot an periodic modes and irrelevant
     to CPU power states.

     Depending on hardware capabilities and configuration, driver can expose each comparator as
     separate event timer or group them into one or several per-CPU event timers.  In last case
     interrupt of every of those comparators within group is bound to specific CPU core.  This is
     possible only when each of these comparators has own unsharable IRQ.

SEE ALSO

     acpi(4), apic(4), atrtc(4), attimer(4), eventtimers(4), timecounters(4)

HISTORY

     The hpet driver first appeared in FreeBSD 6.3.  Support for event timers was added in
     FreeBSD 9.0.