KernelTrap.org interviews Robert Love to learn more about a new patch which provides greater control over the frequency of the Linux kernel's timer interrupt . . .

“Robert Love recently backported the jiffies_to_clock_t() code from the 2.5 development kernel to the 2.4 stable kernel. This patch allows one to adjust the frequency of the timer interrupt, defined in the standard 2.4 kernel with HZ=100. In 2.5 this has been increased to HZ=1000.”

“I wrote Robert asking if he could explain the usefulness of his patch, and he replied in kind with a lengthy and very interesting email detailing what the patch is, how it works, and why it's useful. He explains, 'The timer interrupt is at the heart of the system. Everything lives and dies based on it. Its period is basically the granularity of the system: timers hit on 10ms intervals, timeslices come due at 10ms intervals, etc.' . . .”

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