freebsd-skq/share/man/man7/clocks.7
nik b1e4a2fde1 Fix typo, and add some additional description to the i8254 and TSC.
PR:		docs/20738
Submitted by:	Tan Koan-Sin <freedom@csie.nctu.edu.tw>
2002-01-09 13:10:18 +00:00

158 lines
4.6 KiB
Groff

.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1996 Joerg Wunsch
.\"
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.\" $FreeBSD$
.\" "
.Dd April 1, 1996
.Os
.Dt CLOCKS 7
.Sh NAME
.Nm clocks
.Nd various system timers
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In time.h
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Ql HZ
is not part of the application interface in
.Bx .
.Pp
There are many different real and virtual (timekeeping) clocks with
different frequencies:
.Bl -bullet -offset XXX
.It
The scheduling clock. This is a real clock with frequency that
happens to be 100. It isn't available to applications.
.It
The statistics clock. This is a real clock with frequency that
happens to be 128. It isn't directly available to applications.
.It
The clock reported by
.Xr clock 3 .
This is a virtual clock with a frequency that happens to be 128. Its
actual frequency is given by the macro
.Dv CLOCKS_PER_SEC .
Note that
.Dv CLOCKS_PER_SEC
may be floating point. Don't use
.Fn clock
in new programs under
.Fx .
It is feeble compared with
.Xr getrusage 2 .
It is provided for ANSI conformance. It is implemented by calling
.Fn getrusage
and throwing away information and resolution.
.It
The clock reported by
.Xr times 3 .
This is a virtual clock with a frequency that happens to be 128. Its
actual frequency is given by the macro
.Dv CLK_TCK
(deprecated; don't use) and by
.Fn sysconf SC_CLK_TCK
and by
.Xr sysctl 3 .
Note that its frequency may be different from
.Dv CLOCKS_PER_SEC .
Don't use
.Xr times 3
in new programs under
.Fx .
It is feeble compared with
.Xr gettimeofday 2
together with
.Fn getrusage .
It is provided for POSIX
conformance. It is implemented by calling
.Fn gettimeofday
and
.Fn getrusage
and throwing away information and resolution.
.It
The profiling clock. This is a real clock with frequency 1024.
It is used mainly by
.Xr moncontrol 3 ,
.Xr kgmon 8
and
.Xr gprof 1 .
Applications should determine its actual frequency using
.Xr sysctl 3
or by reading it from the header in the profiling data file.
.It
The mc146818a 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.
.It
The microseconds clock. This is a virtual clock with frequency
1000000. It is used for most timekeeping in
.Bx
and is exported
to applications in
.Xr getrusage 2 ,
.Xr gettimeofday 2 ,
.Xr select 2 ,
.Xr getitimer 2 ,
etc... This is the clock that should normally be used
by
.Bx
applications.
.It
The i8254 clock. This is a real clock/timer with a nominal frequency of
1193182. It has three independent time counters to be used.
It is divided down to give the scheduling clock. It isn't
available to applications.
.It
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
.Sy machdep.tsc_freq ,
if it is available.
It is used to interpolate between values of the scheduling clock.
It can be accessed using the PMIOTSTAMP request of
.Xr perfmon 4 .
.El
.Pp
Summary: if
.Ql HZ
isn't 1000000 then the application is probably using the wrong clock.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr gprof 1 ,
.Xr getitimer 2 ,
.Xr getrusage 2 ,
.Xr gettimeofday 2 ,
.Xr select 2 ,
.Xr clock 3 ,
.Xr moncontrol 3 ,
.Xr times 3
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
This man page has been written by
.An J\(:org Wunsch
after a description posted by
.An Bruce Evans .