[erlang-questions] Sending message at a specific and accurate time

[Felix Gallo]

What os and hardware are you seeing these results on?
On Feb 21, 2016 1:20 PM, "Joe Armstrong" <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:

> I tried a simpler program:
>
> test() -> test(10, []).
>
> test(0, L) ->
>     L;
> test(K, L) ->
>     T1 = ms_time(),
>     erlang:send_after(5000, self(), ping),
>     receive
>       ping ->
>          T2 = ms_time(),
>           test(K-1, [T2-T1|L])
>     end.
>
> ms_time() ->
>     erlang:system_time() div 1000000.
>
> Running this gives the following times
>
> [5001,5001,5006,5006,5002,5003,5006,5002,5002,5006]
>
> I'd expected 5000 or 5001
>
> This is in an unloaded OS with an unloaded erlang. 6ms seems very long -
> there are very few processes running and the system load is virtually zero.
>
> I tried erl -snp disable and setting process_flag(priority, max) but the
> results
> are pretty much the same.
>
> Waiting for shorter times like 100 ms makes no difference - still
> events with a 6 ms delay.
>
> I want to use this for scheduling music events (controlling synths) and
> these
> delays are far more than I expected.
>
> /Joe
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:32 PM, Jesper Louis Andersen
> <jesper.louis.andersen@REDACTED> wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:53 PM, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm getting about a 4 - 9 ms. inaccuracy in the time the messages is
> sent
> >> and
> >> the time I want it to be sent - but I'd like it to be much more accurate
> >> (sub ms if possible)
> >
> >
> > I would start by making measurements without the network component. When
> you
> > would send the gen_udp message, you take a timestamp, and analyze the
> skew
> > from the suggested skew. This lets you estimate the overhead of the rest
> of
> > the system in isolation from your own code and the Erlang VM.
> >
> > Intuitively, 4 to 9 milliseconds is much higher than what I would expect.
> > But note that if you sleep for, say, 40ms, you will be awoken on the 41ms
> > flank at the earliest. This is because you are usually "inside" a
> > millisecond when you make the call so you start by taking the ceiling of
> > that milli-second before you.
> >
> > How much other work is your Erlang VM doing when you make these
> > measurements? You are saying between 4 to 9 ms, which is variance
> suggesting
> > the VM has lots of work to do at that moment. And of course such stuff
> will
> > affect the running time. You can switch priority of your processes up to
> > high, but this comes at the expense of other calculations if you can't
> > finish your work quickly in the process with high priority.
> >
> >
> > --
> > J.
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