improve performance of sys_time(). sys_time() returns time in seconds,
but it does so by calling do_gettimeofday() and then returning the
tv_sec portion of the GTOD time. But the data structure "xtime", which
is updated by every timer/scheduler tick, already offers HZ granularity
time.
the patch improves the sysbench oltp macrobenchmark by 4-5% on an AMD
dual-core system:
v2.6.23:
#threads
1: transactions: 4073 (407.23 per sec.)
2: transactions: 8530 (852.81 per sec.)
3: transactions: 8321 (831.88 per sec.)
4: transactions: 8407 (840.58 per sec.)
5: transactions: 8070 (806.74 per sec.)
v2.6.23 + sys_time-speedup.patch:
1: transactions: 4281 (428.09 per sec.)
2: transactions: 8910 (890.85 per sec.)
3: transactions: 8659 (865.79 per sec.)
4: transactions: 8676 (867.34 per sec.)
5: transactions: 8532 (852.91 per sec.)
and by 4-5% on an Intel dual-core system too:
2.6.23:
1: transactions: 4560 (455.94 per sec.)
2: transactions: 10094 (1009.30 per sec.)
3: transactions: 9755 (975.36 per sec.)
4: transactions: 9859 (985.78 per sec.)
5: transactions: 9701 (969.72 per sec.)
2.6.23 + sys_time-speedup.patch:
1: transactions: 4779 (477.84 per sec.)
2: transactions: 10103 (1010.14 per sec.)
3: transactions: 10141 (1013.93 per sec.)
4: transactions: 10371 (1036.89 per sec.)
5: transactions: 10178 (1017.50 per sec.)
(the more CPUs the system has, the more speedup this patch gives for
this particular workload.)