Subject: Re: pthreads in userland, signals, and itimer.
To: Michael Graff <explorer@flame.org>
From: Frank van der Linden <frank@wins.uva.nl>
List: tech-kern
Date: 11/09/1999 19:12:04
On Tue, Nov 09, 1999 at 07:17:52AM -0800, Michael Graff wrote:
> This will add a lot of new timers/signals, but I do see the need.
> I'll look into this idea.  I don't know how much of an impact it will
> have on things like context switches and the like, but in the case
> where no timers are allocated in this way things should be reasonably
> fast.
> 
> Decisions to make:
> 
> (1)  Should we have, say, 16 virtual and 16 real timers?  Or 8/8?
>      Remember that for each virtual timer there will be more work to
>      do at context switch time, and for each real timer there will be
>      an additional timeout in the kernel.
> 
> (2)  Should we not decide on the layout of timers, but do even more
>      work in the clock tick checking every possible virtual timer?

Maybe you should have a look at the timer_create(3r) function provided
in Solaris. It deals with a lot of the same things.

- Frank