@@ -61,6 +61,20 @@ static u64 arc_read_gfrc(struct clocksource *cs)
unsigned long flags;
u32 l, h;
+ /*
+ * From a programming model pov, there seems to be just one instance of
+ * MCIP_CMD/MCIP_READBACK however micro-architecturally there's
+ * an instance PER ARC CORE (not per cluster), and there are dedicated
+ * hardware decode logic (per core) inside ARConnect to handle
+ * simultaneous read/write accesses from cores via those two registers.
+ * So several concurrent commands to ARConnect are OK if they are
+ * trying to access two different sub-components (like GFRC,
+ * inter-core interrupt, etc...). HW also supports simultaneously
+ * accessing GFRC by multiple cores.
+ * That's why it is safe to disable hard interrupts on the local CPU
+ * before access to GFRC instead of taking global MCIP spinlock
+ * defined in arch/arc/kernel/mcip.c
+ */
local_irq_save(flags);
__mcip_cmd(CMD_GFRC_READ_LO, 0);