<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">There is no other solution other than the two provided. An endless loop without sleep, or an external program (or driver).<div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Sergej<br><div><br><div><div>On 12 Jan 2015, at 17:03, Roberto Ostinelli <<a href="mailto:roberto@widetag.com">roberto@widetag.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:13px">Hi Jesper,</span><div style="font-size:13px">I was expecting a more precise timer, that is all. :)</div><div style="font-size:13px">Thank you for your input.<br></div><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">So: how can someone execute an action every 1ms?</div><div style="font-size:13px"><br>Best,</div><div style="font-size:13px">r.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Jesper Louis Andersen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jesper.louis.andersen@gmail.com" target="_blank">jesper.louis.andersen@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi Roberto,<br><br>I'm not sure what you would expect here. timer:sleep/1 has an implementation like this:<div><br></div><div>sleep(T) -></div><span class=""><div> receive</div><div> after T -> ok</div><div> end.</div></span><div><br>which is what other people told you also. In general, such timing constructs have no guarantee about when they will fire, only that they will fire after the time has elapsed. So what you are seeing is somewhat expected behaviour. The more fine-grained and the more timers you have, the less precise things will get. In a way, this is one of the properties which makes Erlang a soft-realtime system and not a hard-realtime one, although the precise definition of soft/hard realtime are subtly different.</div><div><br></div><div>I believe there were some effort being made by the OTP team to address lock contention around the timer wheel, so the code might change behaviour by quite a lot in the future. It might even have to get worse for single-process timers in order to become better for multi-process timers.</div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon Jan 12 2015 at 12:20:15 PM Roberto Ostinelli <<a href="mailto:roberto@widetag.com" target="_blank">roberto@widetag.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Indeed. From very basic try-outs:<div><br></div><div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">1> test:sleep_periodical(6, 1000). </font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 6022381 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">2> test:sleep_periodical(12, 500).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 6042683 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">3> test:sleep_periodical(24, 250).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 6062096 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">4> test:sleep_periodical(48, 125). </font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 6133169 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">5> test:sleep_periodical(96, 62). </font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 6320419 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">6> test:sleep_periodical(192, 31).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 6492321 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">7> test:sleep_periodical(384, 16).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 7327693 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div></div><div><br></div><div>So it somewhat is ok until we get in the 125ms range.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 12:12 PM, Sergej Jurečko <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sergej.jurecko@gmail.com" target="_blank">sergej.jurecko@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><p dir="ltr">timer:sleep is not even remotely as accurate for those low numbers. It can not go lower than 20ms or so from what i remember.</p><p dir="ltr">I have had this issue once when I needed low interval for timer. I used an external c app which printed to stdout every 5ms. I dont think there is any way in erlang to get a timer that low.<br></p><p dir="ltr">Sergej</p>
<div class="gmail_quote"><div>On Jan 12, 2015 11:46 AM, "Roberto Ostinelli" <<a href="mailto:roberto@widetag.com" target="_blank">roberto@widetag.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div dir="ltr">Additionally:<div><br></div><div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">6> test:sleep_periodical(1000, 1). </font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 1999097 microsecond</font></div></div><div><br></div><div>So:</div><div><ul><li>Looping 1,000 times and sleeping 1 ms each time takes 2.00 seconds (instead of 1).</li></ul><div>Looks like it's ms related, not total count.</div></div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>r.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 11:40 AM, Roberto Ostinelli <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:roberto@widetag.com" target="_blank">roberto@widetag.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Dear list,<div>I've probably missed out something since I'm not understanding what is going here.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm basically just trying to send messages periodically, though I found out that I wasn't seeing the behavior that I was expecting. It looks like the <font face="monospace, monospace">timer</font> has some erratic behavior.</div><div><br></div><div>I've stripped out the code to the bare minimum and it looks like this:</div><div><br></div><div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">-module(test).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">-export([sleep_periodical/2]).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">-export([sleep_loop/2]).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">sleep_periodical(Num, IntervalMs) -></font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>{Time, _Value} = timer:tc(?MODULE, sleep_loop, [Num, IntervalMs]),</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>io:format("Finished in ~p microseconds.~n", [Time]).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">sleep_loop(Num, IntervalMs) -></font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>SleepFun = fun(_) -> timer:sleep(IntervalMs) end,</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>lists:foreach(SleepFun, lists:seq(1, Num)).</font></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>When I run this code, I see the following:</div><div><br></div><div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Erlang/OTP 17 [erts-6.3] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Eshell V6.3 (abort with ^G)</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">1> c(test).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">{ok,test}</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">2> test:sleep_periodical(1000, 10).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 12257397 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">3> test:sleep_periodical(2000, 10).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 24518070 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">4> test:sleep_periodical(10000, 1). </font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 20000280 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">5> test:sleep_periodical(20000, 1).</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">Finished in 40000685 microseconds.</font></div><div><font face="monospace, monospace">ok</font></div></div><div><br></div><div>So:</div><div><ul><li>Looping 1,000 times and sleeping 10 ms each time takes 12.26 seconds (instead of 10).</li><li>Looping 2,000 times and sleeping 10 ms each time takes 24.52 seconds (instead of 20).</li><li>Looping 10,000 times and sleeping 1 ms each time takes 20.00 seconds (instead of 10).</li><li>Looping 20,000 times and sleeping 1 ms each time takes 40.00 seconds (instead of 20).</li></ul><div>Up to 10,000 times it takes 12,16% (1/8) more time, from 10,000 times it takes 100% (double).</div></div><div><br></div><div>Can some kind soul explain what I'm doing wrong here and how to achieve the desired results?</div><div><br></div><div>I'm on OSX, Erlang 17.4.</div><div><br></div><div>Help! ^^_</div><span><font color="#888888"><div>r.</div><div><br></div></font></span></div>
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