On: Low latency tuning guide

[awild]

What kind of tasks would said thread be concerned with? Delegation and I/O?

[bob1029 → awild]

I am currently using it to drive timing of frame generation and processing of UI events (i.e. animations, cursor flashing, etc) in a custom 2d graphics engine.

The API I currently have is:

int RegisterTimer(int afterMicroseconds, Action action)

void CancelTimer(int timerId)

It is really nice having this level of timing resolution and consistency in such a simple interface. I can just assume that whatever action I set up for delayed execution is running precisely when I wanted it to (in practical terms).

[awild → bob1029]

If understand that right you have a thread that only looks for now-open jobs and assigns them to workers? How do they receive their work?

Funny enough, what you're describing is basically the timer api that was used in warcraft 3 scripting.

[ec109685 → awild]

Or the thread is doing the work directly?

[bob1029 → ec109685]

In some cases the thread will, in others it will enqueue the event in an LMAX Disruptor for execution on one of the other available threads.

[magicalhippo → bob1029]

Keep in mind that by spinning, you're preventing the CPU from sleeping thus wasting a lot of energy.

At the very least, make sure you stop spinning when the game loses focus.

[bob1029 → magicalhippo]

For reference, the domain of usage of this timer thread is in a server-side application. Clients do not have to run this. The server application handles many clients simultaneously, so cost of spinning is amortized across many users.