On Sun, 7 Sep 2003, Avi Bryant wrote:

> It does seem to make some difference to start the Linux VM with the
> -notimer flag...

This increases the resolution of ioLowResMSecs() to that of ioMSecs()
(without the flag you get 1/50 sec resolution).  One this the VM does at
primitive invocation is check if the low-res timer ticked during the
primitive, and run the intteruptCheck if it did.  Given the higher
resolution of -notimer it's understandable you're checking more often for
interrupts.

FWIW (without -notimer flag):

  MessageTally spyOn: [10000000 timesRepeat: []]

  1.0GHz G4      - 217 tallies, 3663 msec.
  3.2GHz P4      - 33 tallies, 768 msec.

Ian