xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/get_cyclecount.9 (revision 93e779a26c651610ac6e7986d67ecc9ed2cadcbf)
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd March 15, 2011
28.Dt GET_CYCLECOUNT 9
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm get_cyclecount
32.Nd get the CPU's fast counter register contents
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34.In sys/param.h
35.In sys/systm.h
36.In machine/cpu.h
37.Ft uint64_t
38.Fn get_cyclecount "void"
39.Sh DESCRIPTION
40The
41.Fn get_cyclecount
42function uses a register
43available in most modern CPUs
44to return a value
45that is monotonically increasing
46inside each CPU.
47.Pp
48On SMP systems,
49there will be a number of
50separate monotonic sequences,
51one for each CPU running.
52The value in the SMP case is
53selected from one of these sequences,
54dependent on which CPU
55was scheduled to service the request.
56.Pp
57The speed and the maximum value
58of each counter
59is CPU-dependent.
60Some CPUs
61(such as the
62.Tn Intel
6380486)
64do not have such a register,
65so
66.Fn get_cyclecount
67on these platforms
68returns a (monotonic) combination of numbers
69represented by the
70structure returned by
71.Xr binuptime 9 .
72.Pp
73The
74.Tn AMD64
75and
76.Tn Intel 64
77processors use the
78.Li TSC
79register.
80.Sh SEE ALSO
81.Xr binuptime 9
82.Sh HISTORY
83The
84.Fn get_cyclecount
85function first appeared in
86.Fx 5.0 .
87.Sh AUTHORS
88This manual page was written by
89.An Mark Murray Aq Mt markm@FreeBSD.org .
90