On Fri, 2005-Dec-02 14:32:58 +0100, kama wrote: >I am just wondering why the cpu-timer is doubled from what I set in >kern.hz? > ># vmstat -i >interrupt total rate ... >cpu0: timer 14314031 1999 >Total 14750922 2060 > ># sysctl -a | grep hz >kern.clockrate: { hz = 1000, tick = 1000, profhz = 666, stathz = 133 }
There's only a single timer but FreeBSD needs two independent clocks. The 'tick' clock is used to update the TOD counters and decide when to reschedule processes. The 'stathz' is used to collect statistics on CPU utilisation ('profhz' is used instead if any process is using profiling). Since processes tend to synchronize to 'tick' the statistics clock needs to be independent to ensure that a CPU utilisation is correctly allocated. In order to simulate two clocks, FreeBSD runs the hardware clock at a high rate and uses two different divisors for the soft clocks (/2 for tick, /3 for profhz and /15 for stathz). Larger divisors are better for utilisation statistics but increase clock interrupt overheads. -- Peter Jeremy _______________________________________________ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"