Question

As documented in the blog post Beware of System.nanoTime() in Java, on x86 systems, Java’s System.nanoTime() returns the time value using a CPU specific counter. Now consider the following case I use to measure time of a call:

long time1= System.nanoTime();
foo();
long time2 = System.nanoTime();
long timeSpent = time2-time1;

Now in a multi-core system, it could be that after measuring time1, the thread is scheduled to a different processor whose counter is less than that of the previous CPU. Thus we could get a value in time2 which is less than time1. Thus we would get a negative value in timeSpent.

Considering this case, isn’t it that System.nanotime is pretty much useless for now?

I know that changing the system time doesn’t affect nanotime. That is not the problem I describe above. The problem is that each CPU will keep a different counter since it was turned on. This counter can be lower on the second CPU compared to the first CPU. Since the thread can be scheduled by the OS to the second CPU after getting time1, the value of timeSpent may be incorrect and even negative.

Answer 1

This answer was written in 2011 from the point of view of what the Sun JDK of the time running on operating systems of the time actually did. That was a long time ago! leventov’s answer offers a more up-to-date perspective.

That post is wrong, and nanoTime is safe. There’s a comment on the post which links to a blog post by David Holmes, a realtime and concurrency guy at Sun. It says:

System.nanoTime() is implemented using the QueryPerformanceCounter/QueryPerformanceFrequency API […] The default mechanism used by QPC is determined by the Hardware Abstraction layer(HAL) […] This default changes not only across hardware but also across OS versions. For example Windows XP Service Pack 2 changed things to use the power management timer (PMTimer) rather than the processor timestamp-counter (TSC) due to problems with the TSC not being synchronized on different processors in SMP systems, and due the fact its frequency can vary (and hence its relationship to elapsed time) based on power-management settings.

So, on Windows, this was a problem up until WinXP SP2, but it isn’t now.

I can’t find a part II (or more) that talks about other platforms, but that article does include a remark that Linux has encountered and solved the same problem in the same way, with a link to the FAQ for clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME), which says:

1. Is clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME) consistent across all processors/cores? (Does arch matter? e.g. ppc, arm, x86, amd64, sparc).

It should or it’s considered buggy.

However, on x86/x86_64, it is possible to see unsynced or variable freq TSCs cause time inconsistencies. 2.4 kernels really had no protection against this, and early 2.6 kernels didn’t do too well here either. As of 2.6.18 and up the logic for detecting this is better and we’ll usually fall back to a safe clocksource.

ppc always has a synced timebase, so that shouldn’t be an issue.

So, if Holmes’s link can be read as implying that nanoTime calls clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME), then it’s safe-ish as of kernel 2.6.18 on x86, and always on PowerPC (because IBM and Motorola, unlike Intel, actually know how to design microprocessors).

There’s no mention of SPARC or Solaris, sadly. And of course, we have no idea what IBM JVMs do. But Sun JVMs on modern Windows and Linux get this right.

EDIT: This answer is based on the sources it cites. But i still worry that it might actually be completely wrong. Some more up-to-date information would be really valuable. I just came across to a link to a four year newer article about Linux’s clocks which could be useful.