Timers and Clocks II

Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher, Caccamo

Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Sleep
#include <unistd.h> unsigned sleep(unsigned seconds); Returns 0 if successful. Process can be awakened by a SIGNAL (sleep returns unslept time) sleep() may be implemented using SIGALRM; mixing calls to alarm(2) and sleep() is a bad idea.

Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Nanosleep

int nanosleep(const struct timespec *req, struct timespec *rem); nanosleep() delays the execution of the program for at least the time specified in *req. The function can return (with error) earlier if a signal has been delivered to the process. In this case, it writes the remaining time into the structure pointed to by rem unless rem is NULL. The structure timespec is used to specify intervals of time with nanosecond precision. It is specified in <time.h> and has the form struct timespec { time_t tv_sec; long tv_nsec; }; /* seconds */ /* nanoseconds */
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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Nanosleep

Compared to sleep(3), nanosleep() has the advantage of having higher resolution, not affecting any signals, and it is standardized by POSIX.

nanosleep() is based on the kernel timer mechanism, which has normally a resolution of 1-10 msec (see man 7 time).
nanosleep() pauses always for at least the specified time, however it can take up to 1 extra clock tick (110 msec) for the process to become runnable again. 4

Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Elapsed time versus processor time

The time function measures elapsed time or wall clock time. The virtual time for a process is the amount of time that the process spends in the running state

#include <sys/times.h> clock_t times(struct tms *buffer);

The times() function shall fill the tms structure pointed to by buffer with time-accounting information. The tms structure is defined in <sys/times.h>. All times are measured in terms of the number of clock ticks used.

The tms_utime (of type clock_t) structure member is the CPU time charged for the execution of user instructions of the calling process.
The tms_stime (of type clock_t) structure member is the CPU time charged 5 for execution by the system on behalf of the calling process.

Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Interval Timers

Interval Timers

Set an alarm: on its expiration send a signal Set a signal handler to do something with the signal

POSIX:TMR has at least 1 real-time clock, but a process can create many independent timers

Most systems require the program be linked with the librt (-lrt) library to use these functions.

Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Real Time Clock & timers

Timers can be used to send a signal to a process after a specified period of time has elapsed.
Timers may be used in one of two modes: one-shot or periodic:

when a one-shot timer is set up, a value time is specified. When that time has elapsed, the operating system sends the process a signal and deletes the timer. when a periodic timer is set up, both a value and an interval time are specified. When the value time has elapsed, the operating system sends the process a signal and reschedules the timer for interval time in the future. When the interval time has elapsed, the OS sends another signal and again reschedules the timer for interval time in the future. This will continue until the process manually deletes the timer.

By default a timer will send the SIGALRM signal. If multiple timers are used in one process, however, there is no way to determine which timer sent a particular SIGALRM. Therefore, an alternate signal, like SIGUSR1, may be specified when the timer is created. 7

Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

POSIX.4 Real Time Clock & timers

Resolution of timers:

Timers are maintained by the operating system, and they are only checked periodically. A timer that expires between checks will be signaled (and rescheduled if periodic) at the next check. As a result, a process may not receive signals at the exact time(s) that it requested. The period at which the timers are checked, called the clock resolution, is operating system and hardware dependent (~1 msec in PC without add-on high resolution timers). The actual value can be determined at runtime by calling clock_getres() on the system-wide real-time clock (CLOCK_REALTIME). According to POSIX, there is at least 1 real-time clock (CLOCK_REALTIME)
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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Real Time Clock & timers

Resolution of timers:

For example, suppose the OS checks the timers every 10 milliseconds and a process schedules a periodic timer with value = 5 milliseconds and interval = 21 milliseconds. Quiz: Will the timer periodically expire every 21 milliseconds?

Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Real Time Clock & timers

Resolution of timers:

For example, suppose the OS checks the timers every 10 milliseconds and a process schedules a periodic timer with value = 5 milliseconds and interval = 21 milliseconds. Quiz: Will the timer periodically expire every 21 milliseconds?

Answer: If the period of timer is not an exact multiple of the granularity of underlying clock (see man 7 time), then the interval will be rounded up to the next multiple.
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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Real Time Clock & timers

High Resolution Timers (require hardware support):

How to use high resolution timers?

There are no special requirements, except a recent glibc, to make use of high resolution timers. When the high resolution timers are enabled in the (Linux) kernel, then nanosleep, itimers and posix timers provide the high resolution mode without changes to the source code.

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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

High Resolution Timers in Linux

See man 7 time:

Before Linux 2.6.21, the accuracy of timer and sleep system calls (see below) was limited by the resolution of software clock (~1-10 msec) Since kernel 2.6.21, Linux supports high-resolution timers (HRTs), optionally configurable via CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS. On a system that supports HRTs, the accuracy of sleep and timer system calls is no longer constrained by the software clock, but instead can be as accurate as the hardware allows (microsecond accuracy is typical of modern hardware). You can determine whether high-resolution timers are supported by checking the resolution returned by a call to clock_getres(2) or looking at the "resolution" entries in /proc/timer_list.
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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Real Time Clock & timers

Operations:

Create_timer() is used to create a new timer. As with clock_getres(), the system-wide real-time clock (CLOCK_REALTIME) should be used. The following code shows how to create a timer that sends the default SIGALRM signal.

timer_t timer1; // create a new timer that sends the default SIGALARM signal

if (timer_create (CLOCK_REALTIME, NULL, &timer1) != 0) { perror(timer create); exit(1); NULL specifies that default SIGALARM } will be delivered!

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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Timers: struct sigevent

If a different signal needs to be sent on timer expiration, then the second argument of timer_create takes a pointer to struct sigevent to specify a different signal to be sent.
struct sigevent { int int union sigval } sigev_notify; sigev_signo; sigev_value; /* notification type */ /* signal number */ /* Extra data to be delivered with a real-time signal!

*/

sigev_notify

SIGEV_NONE SIGEV_SIGNAL

- No notification from timer - Send a signal

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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Real Time Clock & timers

Operations: The following code shows how to create a timer that sends the SIGUSR1 signal:
timer_t timerid; struct sigevent se; // Zero out the data structure and configure it for using SIGUSR1 signal memset(&se, 0, sizeof(se)); se.sigev_signo = SIGUSR1; se.sigev_notify = SIGEV_SIGNAL;

// Create a new timer that will send the SIGUSR1 signal if (timer_create(CLOCK_REALTIME, &se, &timerid) != 0) { perror("Failed to create timer); exit(1); }

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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Real Time Clock & timers

The timer_settime() function is used to schedule a timer. The struct itimerspec definition taken from /usr/include/linux/time.h is seen here. The it_value member sets the time until the timer first expires. If it is set to 0, the timer will never go off. The it_interval member sets the period of the timer after it first expires. If it is set to 0, the timer will be one-shot.

struct itimerspec { struct timespec it_interval; /* Timer period */ struct timespec it_value; /* Timer initial expiration */ }; struct timespec { time_t tv_sec; long tv_nsec; }; /* seconds */ /* nanoseconds */
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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

Real Time Clock & timers

Example of scheduling timer1 (created in a preceding example) to go off in 2.5 seconds, and then every 100 milliseconds thereafter.

struct itimerspec timervals; // The it_value member sets the time until the timer first goes off (2.5 seconds). // The it_interval member sets the period of the timer after it first goes off (100 ms). timervals.it_value.tv_sec = 2; // 2 seconds timervals.it_value.tv_nsec = 500000000; // 0.5 seconds (5e8 nanoseconds) timervals.it_interval.tv_sec = 0; // 0 seconds timervals.it_interval.tv_nsec = 100000000; // 100 milliseconds (1e8 nanoseconds) // Schedule the timer if (timer_settime(timerid, 0, &timervals, NULL) != 0) { perror("Failed to start timer"); exit(1); }
Pointer to old itimerspec!

It specifies a relative timer: it does not use absolute time!

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Copyright : Nahrstedt, Angrave, Abdelzaher

POSIX Real Time Clocks

POSIX defines the structure of time representation. There is at least 1 real time clock. We can check the current time with clock_gettime and check the clock resolution with clock_getres. See the following example (compile with -lrt):

#include <time.h>

struct timespec current_time, clock_resolution; return_code = clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &current_time); //check return_code... Printf(current time in CLOCK_REALTIME is %ld sec, %ld nsec \n, current_time.tv_sec, // the second portion current_time.tv_nsec); // the fractional portion in nsec representation return_code = clock_getres(CLOCK_REALTIME, &clock_resolution) //check return_code... printf(CLOCK_REALTIMEs resolution is %ld sec, %ld nsec \n, clock_resolution.tv_sec, clock_resolution.tv_nsec);
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