Re: Initial bits to help pull jiffies out of drivers

[Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>]

Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com> writes:

> This is really for comment, the basic idea is to add some relative
> timer functionality. This gives us timeout objects as well as pulling
> jiffies use into one place in the timer code. The need for the old
> interfaces never goes away however because some code uses a previous
> event base to construct timeouts to avoid sliding due to the latency
> between service and re-addition.

I don't think it matters much for the specific goal of getting rid
of regular timer ticks. I expect even a jiffies less kernel to
emulate jiffies using CLOCK_MONOTONIC and some timer for quite some
time. Basically on these kernels it will just be a bit more expensive
too use, but not much.

Of course add_timeout makes a nicer API in general, so it may be 
still a good idea.

-Andi