Professional Linux Kernel Architecture

Chapter 15

Time Management

All the methods of deferring work to a future point in time discussed in this book so far do not cover one specific area—the time-based deferral of tasks. The different variants that have been discussed do, of course, give some indication of when a deferred task will be executed (e.g., tasklets when handling softIRQs), but it is not possible to specify an exact time or a time interval after which a deferred activity will be performed by the kernel. The simplest kind of usage in this respect is obviously the implementation of time-outs where the kernel on behalf of a userland process waits a specific period of time for the arrival of an event—for example, 10 seconds for a user to press a key as a last opportunity to cancel before an important operation is carried out. Other usages are widespread in user applications.

The kernel itself also uses timers for various tasks, for example, when devices communicate with associated hardware, often using protocols with chronologically defined sequences. A large number of timers are used to specify wait timeouts in TCP implementation.

Depending on the job that needs to be performed, timers need to provide different characteristics, especially with respect to the maximal possible resolution. This chapter discusses the alternatives provided by the Linux kernel.

15.1 Overview

First of all, an overview of the subsystem that we are about to inspect in detail is presented.

15.1.1 Types of Timers

The timing subsystem of ...