From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751452AbVKORYp (ORCPT ); Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:24:45 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751453AbVKORYp (ORCPT ); Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:24:45 -0500 Received: from esc14.midphase.com ([66.225.203.133]:45187 "EHLO esc14.midphase.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751452AbVKORYo (ORCPT ); Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:24:44 -0500 Message-ID: <20051115102425.0iln2874xjoc4g84@coolrunningconcepts.com> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:24:25 -0700 From: evan@coolrunningconcepts.com To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Timer idea MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) H3 (4.0.3) X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - esc14.midphase.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - vger.kernel.org X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [32001 32001] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - coolrunningconcepts.com X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I was thinking about benchmarking, profiling, and various other applications that might need frequent access to the current time. Polling timers or frequent timer signal delivery both seem like there would be a lot of overhead. I was thinking it would be nice if you could just read the time information without making an OS call. I figure the kernel keeps accurate records of current time information and the values of various timers. I then had the idea that one could have a /dev or maybe a /proc entry that would allow you to mmap() the kernel records (read only) and then you could read this information right from the kernel without any overhead. Comments? Please CC me on replies.