Improving the kernel/i386 timecounter performance (GSoC proposal)

[Scott Long]

Robert Watson wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 27 Mar 2009, Scott Long wrote:
> 
>> I've been talking about this for years.  All I need is help with the 
>> VM magic to create the page on fork.  I also want two pages, one 
>> global for gettimeofday (and any other global data we can think of) 
>> and one per-process for static data like getpid/getgid.
> 
> FWIW, there are some variations in schemes across OS's -- one extreme is 
> the Linux approach, which actually exports a mini shared library in ELF 
> format on the shared page, providing implementations of various services 
> (such as entering system calls), time stuff, etc.  Less extreme are the 
> shared pages offered on Mac OS X, etc.
> 

Yes, but I'd like to start somewhere, and considering that it's been
impossible in _5_ years to get the 30 minutes of Peter or JeffR or JHB
time to get the basic VM magic done, I'm keeping my expectations as
modest as possible.

Scott