Conference turris::ada

3874.0. "ADA Calendar granularity" by PEACHS::LAMPERT (Pat Lampert, UNIX Applications Support, 343-1050) Fri May 30 1997 17:50

We have a customer using ADA 3.3 on UNIX 4.0b they need
a real-time clock with a resolution of 1 microsecond.

They recompiled their kernel with MICRO_TIME and can
get this resolution using a simple C program (noted
below), but in ADA using the Calendar package they
can only get around 60 microseconds resolution. Any
ideas?

Pat CSC Atlanta

--------------------------
ADA program.

with Text_IO;
use  Text_IO;
with Calendar;
use  Calendar;


procedure Test is

  package Dur_IO is new Fixed_IO(Standard.Duration);

  count : NATURAL := 50;

  count_arr : ARRAY (1..count) OF Calendar.Time;

begin

  for idx in 1..count loop
    count_arr(idx) := Calendar.Clock;
  end loop;

  for idx in 1..count loop
    Put("Time:  ");
    Dur_IO.Put(Calendar.Seconds(count_arr(idx)),
        Fore => 10,
        Aft  => 12);
    New_Line;
  end loop;

end Test;



----------------------

C program:

#include <sys/timers.h>

#define LOOPCNT 5

int dummy() {}

main ()
{
  int i;

  struct timespec dummyspec[LOOPCNT];

  for (i=0; i < LOOPCNT; i++) {
    dummyspec[i].tv_sec = dummyspec[i].tv_nsec = 0L;
  }

  printf("Starting ...\n");
  for (i=0; i < LOOPCNT; i++) {
    getclock(TIMEOFDAY, &dummyspec[i]);
  }
  printf("... done!\n");

  for (i=0; i < LOOPCNT; i++) {
    printf("%2d :->  %ld Sec    %ld nS \n",
           i, dummyspec[i].tv_sec, dummyspec[i].tv_nsec);
  }
}

In fact, the Time type used in Calendar does have an accuracy of 1 microsecond
if the kernel has been changed; Calendar uses the same data structures as the C
routines internally, and calls the C runtimes using pragma Interface(C,...). 
The problem is that Duration'Small is about 64 microseconds, which means that
any conversion to a Duration will destroy accuracy.  This in turn is because DEC
Ada only supports 32-bit fixed point types.

However, you're no worse off in Ada than you are in C, which doesn't support
longer fixed point types either.  :-)  You can yourself use pragma Interface(C,
...) to call the C runtimes.  Just find CALENDAR.ADA in the sources for PAL (the
Predefined Ada Library) and write something similar to the CLOCK function there.
 I'd suggest imitating the Ada.Real_Time package of Ada95, which was devised to
meet the needs of real-time programmers; the customer could write the routines
as they became needed.

A crude alternative to this is to use, say, Unchecked_Conversion on items of
type Calendar.Time to convert them to a datatype that exposes the internal
details (the datatype can be lifted from CALENDAR.ADA).

If anything is unclear about the above, I'll be happy to explain further.