Documentation/timers/hpet.rst

File Facts

System

Linux kernel

Corpus path

Documentation/timers/hpet.rst

Extension

.rst

Size

1554 bytes

Lines

31

Domain

Support Tooling And Documentation

Bucket

Documentation

Inferred role

Support Tooling And Documentation: exported/initcall integration point

Status

integration implementation candidate

Why This File Exists

Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.

• Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
• Exports symbols or registers init work; inspect boot/module ordering and who consumes the exported contract.

Dependency Surface

• No C-style include directives detected by the generator.

Detected Declarations

• No top-level syscall, struct, function, initcall, or export declaration detected by the generator.

Annotated Snippet

===========================================
High Precision Event Timer Driver for Linux
===========================================

The High Precision Event Timer (HPET) hardware follows a specification
by Intel and Microsoft, revision 1.

Each HPET has one fixed-rate counter (at 10+ MHz, hence "High Precision")
and up to 32 comparators.  Normally three or more comparators are provided,
each of which can generate oneshot interrupts and at least one of which has
additional hardware to support periodic interrupts.  The comparators are
also called "timers", which can be misleading since usually timers are
independent of each other ... these share a counter, complicating resets.

HPET devices can support two interrupt routing modes.  In one mode, the
comparators are additional interrupt sources with no particular system
role.  Many x86 BIOS writers don't route HPET interrupts at all, which
prevents use of that mode.  They support the other "legacy replacement"
mode where the first two comparators block interrupts from 8254 timers
and from the RTC.

The driver supports detection of HPET driver allocation and initialization
of the HPET before the driver module_init routine is called.  This enables
platform code which uses timer 0 or 1 as the main timer to intercept HPET
initialization.  An example of this initialization can be found in
arch/x86/kernel/hpet.c.

The driver provides a userspace API which resembles the API found in the
RTC driver framework.  An example user space program is provided in
file:samples/timers/hpet_example.c

Annotation

• Atlas domain: Support Tooling And Documentation / Documentation.
• Implementation status: integration implementation candidate.

Implementation Notes

• This generated page is the file-by-file coverage layer; curated subsystem chapters should link here when they synthesize a multi-file control flow.
• Core OS pages should be promoted from atlas-only to deep-reviewed when they explain data structures, invariants, locking, lifecycle, and C implementation snippets.
• Driver-family pages are intentionally pattern-oriented unless they are part of the selected PCIe/NVMe representative device path.