[dpdk-stable] [PATCH] doc: describe timestamp limitations for mlx5

[Viacheslav Ovsiienko]

The ConnectX NIC series hardware provides only 63-bit
wide timestamps. The imposed limitations description
added to documentation.

At the moment there are no affected applications known
or bug reports neither, this is just the declaration
of limitation.

Cc: stable at dpdk.org

Signed-off-by: Viacheslav Ovsiienko <viacheslavo at nvidia.com>
---
 doc/guides/nics/mlx5.rst | 17 +++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+)

diff --git a/doc/guides/nics/mlx5.rst b/doc/guides/nics/mlx5.rst
index d175c2061e..043d006a2b 100644
--- a/doc/guides/nics/mlx5.rst
+++ b/doc/guides/nics/mlx5.rst
@@ -480,6 +480,19 @@ Limitations
 
   - Needs OFED 5.4+.
 
+- Timestamps:
+
+  - CQE timestamp field width is limited by hardware to 63 bits, msb is zero
+  - in the free-running mode the timestamp coounter is reset on power on
+    and 63-bit value provides over 1800 years of uptime till overflow
+  - in the real-time mode (configurable with REAL_TIME_CLOCK_ENABLE firmware
+    settings), the timestamp presents the nanoseconds elapsed since 01-Jan-1970,
+    hardware timestamp overflow will happen on 19-Jan-2038
+    (0x80000000 seconds since 01-Jan-1970)
+  - the send scheduling is based on timestamps from the reference "Clock Queue"
+    completions, the scheduled send timestamps should not be specified
+    with non-zero msb
+
 Statistics
 ----------
 
@@ -1242,6 +1255,10 @@ Below are some firmware configurations listed.
    FLEX_PARSER_PROFILE_ENABLE=4
    PROG_PARSE_GRAPH=1
 
+- enable realtime timestamp format::
+
+   REAL_TIME_CLOCK_ENABLE=1
+
 Linux Prerequisites
 -------------------
 
-- 
2.18.1