Description of problem:

System performance degrades by a factor of around 10 (ie 10 times slower)

dmesg shows the following:

[174357.068660] CE: hpet increased min_delta_ns to 30169 nsec
[174850.655727] CE: hpet increased min_delta_ns to 45253 nsec
[174856.212279] CE: hpet3 increased min_delta_ns to 20113 nsec
[174856.212567] CE: hpet3 increased min_delta_ns to 30169 nsec
[174928.086294] CE: hpet3 increased min_delta_ns to 45253 nsec
[174974.191347] CE: hpet5 increased min_delta_ns to 30169 nsec
[174974.191508] CE: hpet5 increased min_delta_ns to 45253 nsec

The best way to make these messages appear is to use some kind of virtualisation software on the host - specifically, VirtualBox, kvm (via libvirtd), or vmware, although I have also seen the messages be displayed without running any virutalisation.

After the above messages are displayed, an application which normally takes 2 minutes to compile takes around 20-25 minutes. The desktop also becomes very slow to respond.

Refora 16, kernel 3.1.7-1.fc16.x86_64.

Hardware is as follows:

[root@dolphin-01 ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DMI (rev 11)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 11)
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Core Processor System Management Registers (rev 11)
00:08.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Core Processor Semaphore and Scratchpad Registers (rev 11)
00:08.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Core Processor System Control and Status Registers (rev 11)
00:08.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Core Processor Miscellaneous Registers (rev 11)
00:10.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link (rev 11)
00:10.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Routing and Protocol Registers (rev 11)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 05)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 05)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 05)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05)
00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev 05)
00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 8 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 82801 SATA RAID Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G92 [Quadro FX 3800M] (rev a2)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
03:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
03:01.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
03:01.3 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5761e Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 35)
11:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03)
3f:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-Core Registers (rev 04)
3f:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 04)
3f:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 04)
3f:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 04)
3f:03.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller (rev 04)
3f:03.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Target Address Decoder (rev 04)
3f:03.4 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Test Registers (rev 04)
3f:04.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Control Registers (rev 04)
3f:04.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Address Registers (rev 04)
3f:04.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Rank Registers (rev 04)
3f:04.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04)
3f:05.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Control Registers (rev 04)
3f:05.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Address Registers (rev 04)
3f:05.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Rank Registers (rev 04)
3f:05.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04)