Quando a contagem de jiffy é incrementada, um processo demora a ser executado. Os jiffies são incrementados pela interrupção do timer que informa ao agendador para reprogramar. O instante define o período de tempo máximo para os processos serem executados sem reagendamento. Se o processo chamar yield()
ou sleep()
, por exemplo, a reprogramação ocorrerá imediatamente. Assim, a mudança de contexto para um próximo processo de execução disponível não ocorre necessariamente no limite do instante.
No entanto, o comportamento real do kernel é definido no tempo de compilação do kernel, linux / kernel / Kconfig.preempt:
choice
prompt "Preemption Model"
default PREEMPT_NONE
config PREEMPT_NONE
bool "No Forced Preemption (Server)"
help
This is the traditional Linux preemption model, geared towards
throughput. It will still provide good latencies most of the
time, but there are no guarantees and occasional longer delays
are possible.
Select this option if you are building a kernel for a server or
scientific/computation system, or if you want to maximize the
raw processing power of the kernel, irrespective of scheduling
latencies.
config PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY
bool "Voluntary Kernel Preemption (Desktop)"
help
This option reduces the latency of the kernel by adding more
"explicit preemption points" to the kernel code. These new
preemption points have been selected to reduce the maximum
latency of rescheduling, providing faster application reactions,
at the cost of slightly lower throughput.
This allows reaction to interactive events by allowing a
low priority process to voluntarily preempt itself even if it
is in kernel mode executing a system call. This allows
applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the system is
under load.
Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop system.
config PREEMPT
bool "Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop)"
select PREEMPT_COUNT
select UNINLINE_SPIN_UNLOCK if !ARCH_INLINE_SPIN_UNLOCK
help
This option reduces the latency of the kernel by making
all kernel code (that is not executing in a critical section)
preemptible. This allows reaction to interactive events by
permitting a low priority process to be preempted involuntarily
even if it is in kernel mode executing a system call and would
otherwise not be about to reach a natural preemption point.
This allows applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the
system is under load, at the cost of slightly lower throughput
and a slight runtime overhead to kernel code.
Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop or
embedded system with latency requirements in the milliseconds
range.
endchoice
Sim, o Linux não pode dizer quantas operações foram executadas em 1 jiffy, já que instruções diferentes usam tempos diferentes para executar, assim como o pipelining das instruções afeta o número de instruções executadas em uma unidade de tempo.