Cross-platform high resolution tick counter on Mono?

Question

I'm looking for a high resolution tick counter on Mono, preferably about the same resolution as a QueryPerformanceCounter on Win32/.NET.

Is this something that needs to be implemented as a native call (like QueryPerformanceCounter is on .NET/Win32) on each platform I need to support? (Linux, OSX).

I need about <1ms resolution.

Answer 1

You should use System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch for this.

Answer 2

See my answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/37882723/5073786

using Mono.Unix.Native;
namespace drone.StackOverflow{

  internal class LinuxHiResTimer {
    internal event EventHandler Tick; // Tick event 

    private System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch watch; // High resolution time
    const uint safeDelay = 0; // millisecond (for slightly early wakeup)
    private Timespec pendingNanosleepParams = new Timespec();
    private Timespec threadNanosleepParams = new Timespec();
    object lockObject = new object();
    internal long Interval { 
        get{
            double totalNanoseconds;
            lock (lockObject) {
                totalNanoseconds= (1e9 * pendingNanosleepParams.tv_sec)
                                         + pendingNanosleepParams.tv_nsec; 


            }
            return (int)(totalNanoseconds * 1e-6);//return value in ms
        } 
        set{
            lock (lockObject) {
                pendingNanosleepParams.tv_sec = value / 1000;
                pendingNanosleepParams.tv_nsec = (long)((value % 1000) * 1e6);//set value in ns
            }
        }
    }
    private bool enabled;
    internal bool Enabled {
        get { return enabled; }
        set {
            if (value) {
                watch.Start();
                enabled = value;
                Task.Run(()=>tickGenerator()); // fire up new thread
            }
            else {
                lock (lockObject) {
                    enabled = value;
                }
            }
        }

    }
    private Task tickGenerator() {
        bool bNotPendingStop; 
        lock (lockObject) {
            bNotPendingStop = enabled;
        }
        while (bNotPendingStop) {
            // Check if thread has been told to halt

            lock (lockObject) {
                bNotPendingStop = enabled;
            }
            long curTime = watch.ElapsedMilliseconds;
                if (curTime >= Interval) {
                    watch.Restart ();
                    if (Tick != null)
                        Tick (this, new EventArgs ());
                } else {
                    long iTimeLeft = (Interval - curTime); // How long to delay for 
                    if (iTimeLeft >= safeDelay) { // Task.Delay has resolution 15ms//await Task.Delay(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(iTimeLeft - safeDelay));
                        threadNanosleepParams.tv_nsec = (int)((iTimeLeft - safeDelay) * 1e6);
                        threadNanosleepParams.tv_sec = 0;
                        Syscall.nanosleep (ref threadNanosleepParams, ref threadNanosleepParams);
                    }
                }

        }
        watch.Stop();
        return null;
    }
}

Usage:

 private myMainFunction(){
  LinuxHiResTimer timReallyFast = new LinuxHiResTimer();
  timReallyFast.Interval=25; // 
  timReallyFast.Tick += new EventHandler(timReallyFast_Tick);
  timReallyFast.Enabled = true;
}
private void timReallyFast_Tick(System.Object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
// Do this quickly i.e. 
 PollSerialPort();
}