Frank Kardel <kardel@acm.org> writes:
> BTW: shouldn't NetBSD upgrade to timecounters as found in FreeBSD and
> (as I am told) in OpenBSD?

Just to save other folks the trouble.  Here is Poul's timecounter
paper.

       Timecounters: Efficient and precise timekeeping in SMP kernels.
                              Poul-Henning Kamp
                             The FreeBSD Project
                                   ABSTRACT

          The FreeBSD timecounters are an architecture-independent
    implementation of a binary timescale using whatever hardware support
    is at hand for tracking time. The binary timescale converts using
    simple multiplication to canonical timescales based on micro- or
    nano-seconds and can interface seamlessly to the NTP PLL/FLL
    facilities for clock synchronisation.  Timecounters are implemented
    using lock-less stable-storage based primitives which scale
    efficiently in SMP systems. The math and implementation behind
    timecounters will be detailed as well as the mechanisms used for
    synchronisation.

       http://phk.freebsd.dk/pubs/timecounter.pdf


-wolfgang