Signals, Timers, and Clock Sources

Status Draft outlineSection Operating Systems and Execution

Signals and timers inject asynchronous events into otherwise sequential execution. Clock choice determines whether elapsed-time and deadline calculations remain meaningful.

Planned model

Schedule timers against monotonic and realtime clocks while introducing signal delivery delay, coalescing, interruption, drift, and wall-clock adjustment.

Questions

• Which work is safe inside a signal handler?
• How do timer resolution and delivery latency differ?
• Why should deadlines normally use monotonic time?

Exercise

Design a periodic task that handles overruns without silently drifting later on every cycle.