Ernesto L. Williams, Jr. <ernesto@xxxxxxxx> asks about the availability of high-resolution timers, and whether the gethrtime() function is found only on Solaris. Although this question is off-topic on the gcc-help list, it may nevertheless be of interest to readers, because it is question that many of us have probably raised, and for which Unix vendors and programming-language standards bodies have provided little help. Today, with GHz clocks on modern processors, the 60 and 100 ticks per second of the default CPU timer is completely inadequate for serious profiling. The profiling version of awk, pawk, that I prepared in 2002 has some notes and code on the topic. This is an interest of mine, and pawk is available at: ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub pawk http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/pawk There are implementations in pawk of high-resolution timers in cpuclock.c for GNU/Linux on PowerPC, Sun Solaris, and for the DEC/Compaq/HP Alpha architecture. The files README.PROFILE, mail.txt, and TIMER.NOTES record additional information that I collected. If others on this list of new information to contribute that would extend coverage to other platforms, I'll be happy to make an updated version of cpuclock.c, and prepare an improved version of the TIMER.NOTES file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 - - University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 - - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - - 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe@xxxxxxx beebe@xxxxxxxxxxxx - - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
