How to create a high resolution timer in Linux to measure program performance?
Check out clock_gettime
, which is a POSIX interface to high-resolution timers.
If, having read the manpage, you're left wondering about the difference between CLOCK_REALTIME
and CLOCK_MONOTONIC
, see Difference between CLOCK_REALTIME and CLOCK_MONOTONIC?
See the following page for a complete example: http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2007/09/22/profiling-code-using-clock_gettime/
#include <iostream>
#include <time.h>
using namespace std;
timespec diff(timespec start, timespec end);
int main()
{
timespec time1, time2;
int temp;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &time1);
for (int i = 0; i< 242000000; i++)
temp+=temp;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &time2);
cout<<diff(time1,time2).tv_sec<<":"<<diff(time1,time2).tv_nsec<<endl;
return 0;
}
timespec diff(timespec start, timespec end)
{
timespec temp;
if ((end.tv_nsec-start.tv_nsec)<0) {
temp.tv_sec = end.tv_sec-start.tv_sec-1;
temp.tv_nsec = 1000000000+end.tv_nsec-start.tv_nsec;
} else {
temp.tv_sec = end.tv_sec-start.tv_sec;
temp.tv_nsec = end.tv_nsec-start.tv_nsec;
}
return temp;
}
To summarise information presented so far, these are the two functions required for typical applications.
#include <time.h>
// call this function to start a nanosecond-resolution timer
struct timespec timer_start(){
struct timespec start_time;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &start_time);
return start_time;
}
// call this function to end a timer, returning nanoseconds elapsed as a long
long timer_end(struct timespec start_time){
struct timespec end_time;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &end_time);
long diffInNanos = (end_time.tv_sec - start_time.tv_sec) * (long)1e9 + (end_time.tv_nsec - start_time.tv_nsec);
return diffInNanos;
}
Here is an example of how to use them in timing how long it takes to calculate the variance of a list of input.
struct timespec vartime = timer_start(); // begin a timer called 'vartime'
double variance = var(input, MAXLEN); // perform the task we want to time
long time_elapsed_nanos = timer_end(vartime);
printf("Variance = %f, Time taken (nanoseconds): %ld\n", variance, time_elapsed_nanos);
struct timespec t;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &t);
there is also CLOCK_REALTIME_HR, but I'm not sure whether it makes any difference..