# Jiffies?

## james

What are they and why do I need them?

So if I need them, how many do I use?

J

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## russell316

The number of elapsed ticks since the system was started;  it is set to 0 during kernel initialization and incremented by 1 when a timer interrupt occurs, that is, on every tick.

this comes from the "Understanding the Linux Kernel" by Daniel P. Bovet and Marco Cesati

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