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

Christoph Lameter
2005-07-14T20:42:23Z

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> So the _sane_ way to do timeouts is to define an _arbitrary_ clock that is
> just an integer counter. None of this "nanoseconds + full seconds" crap.
> None of this stupid confusion with "real time". You select something that
> is conceptually _clearly_ somethign else, and that will never get confused
> when root sets the time backwards or anything like that.
>
> In other words, you select the thing we call "jiffies".

AFAIK John simply wants to change jiffies to count in nanoseconds since
bootup and then call it "clock_monotonic". One 64 bit value no splitting
into seconds and nanoseconds anymore. This allows arbitrary length
intervals between timer interrupts.