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Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 13:41:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Christoph Lameter <christoph@lameter.com>
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To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
cc: john stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>,
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] i386: Selectable Frequency of the Timer Interrupt
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On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> So the _sane_ way to do timeouts is to define an _arbitrary_ clock that is 
> just an integer counter. None of this "nanoseconds + full seconds" crap. 
> None of this stupid confusion with "real time". You select something that 
> is conceptually _clearly_ somethign else, and that will never get confused 
> when root sets the time backwards or anything like that.
> 
> In other words, you select the thing we call "jiffies".

AFAIK John simply wants to change jiffies to count in nanoseconds since 
bootup and then call it "clock_monotonic". One 64 bit value no splitting 
into seconds and nanoseconds anymore. This allows arbitrary length 
intervals between timer interrupts.