Erlang application which is a high(er) performance and API compatible version of timer. (just timer2:... instead of timer:...)
You should only need a somewhat recent version of Erlang/OTP, though the module has only been tested with Erlang R15B and R15B01.
To initialize the project run make bootstrap.
To compile the module run make.
To run the unit tests run make test.
To enter a console run make console.
timer2:start() will start up the timer. (Take a look at src/timer2.erl to see the list of applications that need to be started though!)
In app.config you can adjust the number of acceptors and processors based on need (see below)
timer2:add_child(timer2_acceptor | timer2_processor) can be used to dynamically increase capacity
timer works perfectly well, as long as you don't stress it. Its implemented as a gen_server,
and uses the {reply, Timeout} feature to deal with the timer functionality. It also plays some
fun games with ETS and ordered_sets to figure out what should happen next. All well and good, except that its
pretty easy to overload it, especially if the timer requests come fast and furious.
timer2, on the other hand, works differently. It is basically a wrapper around erlang:send_after
as per the Common Caveats in the Erlang Efficiency Guide.
Structurally, there are two sets of gen_servers, acceptors and processors. The acceptors are responsible
for accepting timer2: requests (who would-a thunk it!), and all the associated housekeeping. The processors
basically do stuff - sending messages or spawning MFAs at the appropriate time.
As you might imagine, the acceptor is the one most likely to get overloaded. A good rule of thumb for high_performance
is to increase the number of acceptors as your load/need increases.
You should rarely need more than one or two processors though.