《Hrtimers and Beyond- Transforming the Linux Time》.pdf

Hrtimers and Beyond: Transforming the Linux Time Subsystems Thomas Gleixner Douglas Niehaus linutronix University of Kansas tglx@linutronix.de niehaus@ Abstract will complement and complete the hrtimers and timeofday components to create a solid foun- dation for architecture independent support of Several projects have tried to rework Linux high-resolution timers and dynamic ticks. time and timers code to add functions such as high-precision timers and dynamic ticks. Pre- vious efforts have not been generally accepted, in part, because they considered only a sub- 1 Introduction set of the related problems requiring an inte- grated solution. These efforts also suffered sig- Time keeping and use of clocks is a fundamen- nificant architecture dependence creating com- tal aspect of operating system implementation, plexity and maintenance costs. This paper and thus of Linux. Clock related services in op- presents a design which we believe provides a erating systems fall into a number of different generally acceptable solution to the complete categories: set of problems with minimum architecture de- pendence. • time keeping The three major components of the