Re: [Qemu-devel] [patch] option -no-tsc for i386 with speedstep

[Filip Navara]

Jonas Maebe wrote:

> On 25 Apr 2005, at 22:17, Massimo Dal Zotto wrote:
>
> > In the meantime until we find a better solution could you give us some
> > explanation on why using a microseconds clock from gettimeofday instead
> > of rdtsc the guest os clock runs always 20% slower?
>
> Because a system call (which gettimeofday is) is very slow (two 
> context switches).

I remember there was a Linux patch which changed the gettimeofday 
function to read the info from user mode shared page (which is updated 
by the kernel) and thus avoided the syscall overhead. Not sure if/when 
it was integrated into the official sources...

(Once again Windows NT were ahead of time with this idea implemented way 
earlier ;-)

- Filip