The Ticking Beast: A Deep Dive Into Timers, Timekeeping, Tick and Tickless Kernels

Dive deep into the critical components of the Linux kernel - the Timekeeping and Timers subsystems - in this comprehensive mentorship session led by Joel Fernandes, Staff Software Engineer at Google. Explore the intricate internals of these systems and understand their crucial role in supporting essential subsystems like the Scheduler and Ftrace. Examine the challenges posed by modern requirements, including power efficiency, rapid clock access, and clock drift management. Gain insights into the impact of CPU idle on the tick and timers, and unravel the concept of broadcast timers. This 1 hour 43 minute session provides a thorough tour of these fundamental kernel components, equipping you with valuable knowledge about the inner workings of Linux timekeeping mechanisms.