calculate_min_delta(9)

okay bestie 💖 welcome to calculate_min_delta(9) from the Kernel API Manual — this is the page for the little kernel helper that calculates a good minimum delta for mips_next_event(). slay. Let's go. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

calculate_min_delta — Calculate a good minimum delta for mips_next_event(). 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

unsigned int calculate_min_delta (void );

🌸 ARGUMENTS 🌸

• void — no arguments. literally none, bestie. 🫶

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so picture this: running under virtualisation can introduce overhead into mips_next_event in the form of hypervisor emulation of the CP0_Count/CP0_Compare registers. 😭 and those registers can potentially be at an unnatural frequency, which makes a fixed min_delta_ns value inappropriate — because it may be too small. no cap.

It can also introduce occasional latency from the guest being descheduled. 💀

So this function calculates a good minimum delta, based roughly on the 75th percentile of the time taken to do the mips_next_event sequence. Why? To handle potentially higher overhead while also eliminating outliers due to unpredictable hypervisor latency — and those outliers can be handled by retries. 🔥

⭐ RETURN ⭐

An appropriate minimum delta for the clock event device. that's it, that's the return value. ✨

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• Kernel file ./arch/mips/kernel/cevt-r4k.c — go peek, iykyk. 👑

cute little sign-off: source/version is ./arch/mips/kernel 🌸, date is October 2026 🎀, and the page is calculate_min_delta(9) 💖. mwah 💋