Re: [PATCH] i386: Selectable Frequency of the Timer Interrupt

Linus Torvalds
2005-07-08T22:12:43Z

On Fri, 8 Jul 2005, Andrew Morton wrote:
> >
> > The previous value here i386 is 1000 --- so why is the default 250.
>
> Because 1000 is too high.

Yes. I chose 1000 originally partly as a way to make sure that people that
assumed HZ was 100 would get a swift kick in the pants. That meant making
a _big_ change, not a small subtle one. For example, people tend to react
if "uptime" suddenly says the machine has been up for a hundred days (even
if it's really only been up for ten), but if it is off by just a factor of
two, it might be overlooked.

So 1kHz was a bit of an overkill, but it worked well enough that we never
really got around to changing it.

Linus