NAME
clocks
—
various system timers
SYNOPSIS
#include
<time.h>
DESCRIPTION
‘HZ
’ is not part of the application
interface in BSD.
There are many different real and virtual (timekeeping) clocks with different frequencies:
- The scheduling clock. This is a real clock with frequency that happens to be 100. It isn't available to applications.
- The statistics clock. This is a real clock with frequency that happens to be 128. It isn't directly available to applications.
- The clock reported by
clock(3). This is a virtual clock with a frequency that happens to
be 128. Its actual frequency is given by the macro
CLOCKS_PER_SEC
. Note thatCLOCKS_PER_SEC
may be floating point. Don't useclock
() in new programs under DragonFly. It is feeble compared with getrusage(2). It is provided for ANSI conformance. It is implemented by callinggetrusage
() and throwing away information and resolution. - The clock reported by
times(3). This is a virtual clock with a frequency that happens to
be 128. Its actual frequency is given by the macro
CLK_TCK
(deprecated; don't use) and bysysconf
(SC_CLK_TCK) and by sysctl(3). Note that its frequency may be different fromCLOCKS_PER_SEC
. Don't use times(3) in new programs under DragonFly. It is feeble compared with gettimeofday(2) together withgetrusage
(). It is provided for POSIX conformance. It is implemented by callinggettimeofday
() andgetrusage
() and throwing away information and resolution. - The profiling clock. This is a real clock with frequency 1024. It is used mainly by moncontrol(3) and gprof(1). Applications should determine its actual frequency using sysctl(3) or by reading it from the header in the profiling data file.
- The mc14618a clock. This is a real clock with a nominal frequency of 32768. It is divided down to give the statistic clock and the profiling clock. It isn't available to applications.
- The microseconds clock. This is a virtual clock with frequency 1000000. It is used for most timekeeping in BSD and is exported to applications in getrusage(2), gettimeofday(2), select(2), getitimer(2), etc... This is the clock that should normally be used by BSD applications.
- The i8254 clock. This is a real clock/timer with a nominal frequency of 1193182. It is divided down to give the scheduling clock. It isn't available to applications.
- The TSC clock (64-bit register) on fifth-generation or later x86 systems. This is a real clock with a frequency that is equivalent to the number of cycles per second of the CPU(s). Its frequency can be found using the sysctl hw.tsc_frequency and its presence via hw.tsc_present. It is used to interpolate between values of the scheduling clock. It is only available to applications in a purely machine-dependent manner.
- The HPET (High Precision Event Timers). Only main counter is used
currently. This CPU timer is expected to be faster than ACPI-fast24 and
ACPI-safe, so it should be given higher priority. HPET is not enabled by
default. To enable it, you should add
debug.acpi.enabled="hpet"
to your /boot/loader.conf. If the HPET is detected and attached, kern.cputimer.name will reportHPET
.
Summary: if ‘HZ
’ isn't
1000000 then the application is probably using the wrong clock.
SEE ALSO
gprof(1), getitimer(2), getrusage(2), gettimeofday(2), select(2), clock(3), moncontrol(3), times(3), loader.conf(5)
AUTHORS
This man page has been written by Jörg Wunsch after a description posted by Bruce Evans.