On Tue, 2005-11-15 at 10:58 -0800, George Anzinger wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
> > 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.
> >
>
> Your are describing the vsyscall. John Stultz and company are actively working on this as we speak.
> If memory serves, it is already available on some platforms.
Yep. x86-64 already supports this as does ppc64 via vsyscall/VDSOs. ia64
has a different variant on it as well (fast syscalls).
thanks
-john
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