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Nanosecond event tracing timestamps

To: Ken McDonell <kenj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Nanosecond event tracing timestamps
From: Nathan Scott <nathans@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 21:16:16 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: pcp <pcp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Delivered-to: pcp@xxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <1118315549.22700955.1407113833387.JavaMail.zimbra@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-to: Nathan Scott <nathans@xxxxxxxxxx>
Thread-index: N/xODEcQp8hy0o8I45GRv4zp3zbn2A==
Thread-topic: Nanosecond event tracing timestamps
Hi Ken,

I was having a (very!) detailed discussion with someone after
the PyCon.AU talk yesterday, who was quite interested in the
event tracing support in PCP.  One issue he raised was our use
of microsecond-resolution timestamps (over nanoseconds, which
he'd found valuable in the past with other tools).

>From a quick audit, this time-resolution is fairly well baked
into the protocol and on-disk format now - any thoughts on how
one might best go about increasing this resolution?  (I'm only
thinking events here, and not the top level pmResult timestamp
- its not clear the latter would realistically benefit from a
finer granularity in practice).

The best I've come up with so far would involve a __pmTimespec,
a pmHighResEventRecord, and a new PM_TYPE_HIGHRES_EVENT (PMDAs
could then use clock_gettime(2) and/or preserve the resolution
of a nanosec timestamp delivered to them) ... any alternatives,
or better ideas that spring to mind?

cheers.

--
Nathan

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