Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!ziebmef!mcp
From: mcp@ziebmef.uucp (Marc Plumb)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Timer question
Message-ID: <1988Dec31.195738.1518@ziebmef.uucp>
Date: 1 Jan 89 00:57:37 GMT
References: <427@tekn01.chalmers.se> <3210@amiga.UUCP> <3137@sugar.uu.net> <5584@cbmvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcp@ziebmef.UUCP (Colin Plumb)
Organization: Ziebmef Public Access Unix, Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 21

Just to throw in an idea, I'd like to mention that the way the Inmos
transputer handles its on-chip timer is quite elegant:

There is a current time, which I'll call "now".

When you do something like a Delay(), you actually wait for a time.
There are, in fact, two timers, one of which runs at 1 MHz and one
of which runs at 1/64 that rate.  Even the faster one can fit enough range
into 32 bits (4096 seconds is over an hour) for most purposes.

If you wait for a time which is between now-0x7fffffff and now, you don't
wait at all; your time has passed already, and the call returns immediately.

If you wait for a time from now+1 to now+0x80000000, you are put in the
queue of sleeping processes and awoken when your time rolls around.

Combined with a way to get the current time, this provides all the
functionality most people want.  There's no ned to fudge to be woken up
every n microseconds.
-- 
	-Colin