Author :
Nick Mathewson
Date :
2012-04-26 16:22:03
Hash :26c75828 Message :When PRECISE_TIMERS is set with epoll, use timerfd for microsecond precision
The epoll interface ordinarily gives us one-millisecond
precision, so on Linux it makes perfect sense to use the
CLOCK_MONOTONIC_COARSE timer. But when the user has set the new
PRECISE_TIMER flag for an event_base (either by the
EVENT_BASE_FLAG_PRECISE_TIMER flag, or by the EVENT_PRECISE_TIMER
environment variable), they presumably want finer granularity.
On not-too-old Linuxes, we can achieve this using the Timerfd
mechanism, which accepts nanosecond granularity and understands
posix clocks. It's a little more expensive than just calling
epoll_wait(), so we won't do it by default.
Nick Mathewson