Topic: How To determine Linux Kernel Timer Interrupt Frequency - ADVENAGE

How To determine Linux Kernel Timer Interrupt Frequency

Linux timer interrupt frequency is an important parameter for near to real-time and multimedia applications running on Linux. The timer interrupt frequency directly impacts the capability of any near-to real time and multimedia application to process events at high frequencies. The term high in this context means usually greater than 100 Hz (1/10 ms).

In the old days the kernel configuration setting CONFIG_HZ was the most important setting for the kernel timer frequency. It was defined at compilation time of the kernel and settings varied between distributions and kernel versions.

Today, a number of other kernel settings - such as NO_HZ, HIGH_RES_TIMERS - impact the kernel timer interrupt frequency as well. Finally the availability of High Precision Event Timer (HPET) support is also an important feature.

All these settings may be retrieved easily from the current kernel configuration. For example:

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