Document Type

Technical Report

Department

Computer Science and Engineering

Publication Date

1995-01-01

Filename

WUCS-95-23.PDF

Technical Report Number

WUCS-95-23

Abstract

We describe a new implementation of the BSD callout and timer facilities. Current BSD kernels take time proportional to the number of outstanding timers to set or cancel timers. Our implementation takes constant time to start, stop, and maintain timers; this leads to a highly scalable design that can support thousands of outstanding timers without much overhead. Unlike the existing implementation, our routines are guaranteed to lock out interrupts only for a small, bounded amount of time. We also extend the setitimer() interface to allow a process to have multiple outstanding timers, thereby reducing the need for users to maintain their own timer packages. The changes to the BSD kernel are small (548 lines of code added, 80 removed) and are available on the World Wide Web.

Comments

Permanent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7936/K7VM49H5

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