Hot Take Linux finally follows Windows and makes a CPU feature requirement mandatory

AFEH

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The Linux kernel is finally making the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) a hard requirement for x86 processors more than a decade after Microsoft began using it as the preferred basis for high-resolution timing on suitable Windows systems.

For those wondering, the TSC is a special 64-bit register that acts as a processor counter and has been around since the Intel Pentium era. It provides a high-resolution (a highly fine-grained) way of measuring elapsed time, and can be accessed much more quickly (as it's just a CPU register) than platform timers such as HPET (High Precision Event Timer) or the ACPI PM (power management) timer.

 

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