Method for processing time values in a computer or programmable machine

US8185770B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• TIXEL GmbH · DE

Inventors

• Eduard Siemens · Sehnde, DE
• Frank Glaeser · Hannover, DE
• Jens Brocke · Laatzen, DE
• Stefan Kubsch · Hohnhorst, DE
• Ralf Koehler · Hannover, DE
• Andreas Matthias Aust · Hannover, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Jan 30, 2009
• Grant date: May 22, 2012
• Expiry date: Oct 17, 2030

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F1/14
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Modern computers (10, 20) come with different timers having different attributes like time resolution, supported time range and time reference. Some are local timers, representing relative time values like the TSC counter (11, 21) counting CPU cycles from the power on or reset of the computer. Some are global timers, representing an absolute or real time. Having different classes of timers in the computer (10, 20), a number of computations need to be performed to tie the different timers to each other.It is the idea of the invention to define a single high resolution timer structure wherein the time value is represented with a digital number and a flag clarifies whether the timer is a global timer or local timer. The invention enables a much faster processing of the time values. The global time, tied to a high-resolution timer can be tracked much faster. This means better precision of scheduling of time critical jobs, like packet scheduling for data transport.