Re: jiffies

["Karthika Sivaramakrishnan" <karthika212@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!
Here is an excerpt from some literature I have.

Linux has a very simple view of what time it is; it measures time in clock ticks since the system booted. All system times are based on this measurement, which is known as jiffies after the globally available variable of the same name. 

	( - Does this mean jiffies is initialised to 0?)

Times and Timers:
The kernel keeps track of a processes creation time as well as the CPU time that it consumes during its lifetime. Each clock tick, the kernel updates the amount of time in jiffies that the current process has spent in system and in user mode. Linux also supports process specific interval timers, processes can use system calls to set up timers to send signals to themselves when the timers expire. These timers can be single-shot or periodic timers. 

Hope you find it useful.
- Karthika


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