Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] rewrote timer implementation for rtl8139.

[Alexander Graf]

On 19.02.2010, at 22:50, Anthony Liguori wrote:

> On 02/16/2010 02:35 AM, Frediano Ziglio wrote:
>> Add a QEMU timer only when needed (timeout status not set, timeout
>> irq wanted and timer set).
>> 
>> This patch is required for Darwin. Patch has been tested under
>> FreeBSD, Darwin and Linux.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Frediano Ziglio<address@hidden>
>>   
> 
> Alex, I know you've played with this feature for OS X in the past.
> 
> Is this something we should be enabling unconditionally?

I've played with it and realized that

1) OSX's rtl8139 driver uses this timer instead of tx/rx interrupts to process 
the queue
2) it was broken

I haven't gotten around to test if this patch makes it work, but I'd suppose so.

So yes, I think it should be enabled by default. It's a feature real hw has, so 
we should emulate it.


Alex