From: Jeremy Hinegardner <jeremy@...>
Date: 2008-10-13T12:59:41+09:00
Subject: Re: hitimes 0.3.0 Released

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 02:32:25AM +0900, Roger Pack wrote:
> > hitimes version 0.3.0 has been released.  Now with windows support.
> 
> Looks nice.  I love how accurate it is over traditional Benchmark.

Thanks!

> Wish list: 1.9 use,

I'll get around to 1.9 at some point.   

> and also the ability to use the CPU clock counter 
> [maybe guess or estimate the accuracy?].  That might be faster, for 
> those of us that want speed over accuracy :) [1] seems to use it, as an 
> example.  

It looks like ruby-prof some assembler to get its timing calls.  Unfortunately I
don't know assembler, otherwise I may have gone that route.

I went with the lowest level timing API call I could find on each system.  this
means that on Windows it uses the QueryPerformanceCounter()[1] and
QueryPerformanceFrequency() combination, on OS X is uses UpTime()[2], and
everything else goes to clock_gettime()[3].

> Anything to improve speed [like a C based measure, etc.]

Patches are always welcome :-).  Feel free to contribute[4].

The Interval class is pure C.  I may re-implement Timer in C, but not quite yet.
In hitimes, the fastest way to measure the execution time of a piece of code is:

  duration = Interval.measure { # your code here }

If ther are faster ways to measure the execution of code, I would happy to
incorporate them.

enjoy,

-jeremy

[1] - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644904.aspx
[2] - http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/DeviceManagers/pci_srvcs/pci_cards_drivers/PCI_BOOK.199.html#pgfId=4848
[3] - http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=clock_gettime&sektion=2
[4] - http://github.com/copiousfreetime/hitimes/tree/master

-- 
========================================================================
 Jeremy Hinegardner                              jeremy@hinegardner.org