Time

Bell tower of a church, Allauch (France)

I wrote the Python PEP 418 and I added new functions to Python 3.3:

  • time.monotonic(): timeout and scheduling, not affected by system clock updates
  • time.perf_counter(): benchmarking, most precise clock for short period
  • time.process_time(): profiling, CPU time of the process

On Linux older than 2.6.28, select(), poll() and epoll() use kernel jiffies and so a resolution of 1/HZ. HZ can be ready from sysconfig(_SC_CLK_TCK), os.sysconfig('SC_CLK_TCK') in Python.

Linux 2.6.28:

Windows:

  • libvirt: if HPET is present in the XML file of the Virtual Machine:

    <clock offset='localtime'>
    <timer name='hpet' present='yes'/>
</clock>

  • Enable HPET:

    • open a console in adminstrator mode
    • type bcdedit /set useplatformclock true
    • reboot

  • Disable HPET:

    • open a console in adminstrator mode
    • type bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock
    • reboot

  • HPET enabled:

    • time.time() incremented by 15.6 ms,
    • time.monotonic() incremented by 15.0 or 16.0 ms,
    • time.process_time() incremented by 15.6 ms (but unrelated to system time, it’s the CPU usage time),
    • time.perf_counter() is always incremented (less than 0.2 ms)
    • time.get_clock_info(‘perf_counter’).resolution: 10 ns (1.0e-08) => 100 MHz
    • HPET frequency should be 14.3 MHz

  • HPET disabled:

    • xxx

  • HPET device missing (ex: disabled in the BIOS):

    • time.time() incremented by 15.6 ms,
    • time.monotonic() incremented by 15.0 or 16.0 ms,
    • time.get_clock_info(‘perf_counter’).resolution: 279.4 ns (2.79e-7) => 3.579 MHz (ACPI Power Management Timer)

  • Control Panel, périphériques:

    • Compteur d’événements de haute précision => HPET
    • Horloge système CMOS/temps réel

asyncio timeout rounding:

Other: