[cgl_discussion] [Timers evaluation/Validation] Notes from Timers eval team meetin g

[Craig Thomas]

On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 13:17, Fleischer, Julie N wrote:
> Randy (cc CGL) -
> Here's a summary of what we discussed today re: validation subgroup's role
> in the evaluation of Timers implementations.
> 
> Overall
> -------
> The overall picture is that Geoff will define the background, the POSIX
> requirements, and why we need high-res-timers, Randy is writing the paper
> with the analysis and is performing the engineering evaluation, and Julie is
> doing the validation of current implementations.
> 
> Validation Piece
> ----------------
> At this point, it looks like everything being worked on for POSIX Test Suite
> directly maps to the CGL validation of Timers.  A conformance test suite has
> been created (and run against recent versions of both Timers
> implementations).  The next test suites to be created are:
> - Functional - Verify full behavior of clocks and timers.
> - Stress/Performance - Verify/Benchmark the behavior of clocks/timers under
> various load conditions.

I don't mean to make a joke of this (I am really serious), but how do
you time a timer?  This will be a hard problem to solve.  Trying to
determine if timers respond in an acceptable fashion under heavy stress
would mean that you need to make sure that they keep their time.  But
how to you measure how they keep their time?  

With another set of (non posix) timers, perhaps?

> 
> We hope to have these tests completed by mid-February, and then a test pass
> can be run against the current implementations.  (This should fit within the
> proposed timeline for the project of 1-2 months.)
> 
> - Julie
> 
> **These views are not necessarily those of my employer.**
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-- 
Craig Thomas <craiger at osdl.org>
OSDL