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Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:13:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com>
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Subject: Re: short explanation -jiffies (newbie)
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On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, sting sting wrote:

> Hello,
> can someone give a short explanation what jiffies are?
> regards
> sting

It is a variable that keeps increasing forever until
it wraps back to zero at which time it still keeps
increasing. It gets increased at the HZ (a defined constant)
rate as a result of a hardware interrupt.

It is used for various timing functions within the kernel.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.22 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.