[Python-ideas] millisecond and microsecond times without floats

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:59:08 +0300
Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 12:40:10 +0200
> Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:13:49 +0300
> > Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > So, the question is not how to "appropriate for precise datetime
> > > computations" - MicroPython inherits that ability by being a Python,
> > > but how to scale into the opposite direction, how to integrate into
> > > stdlib "realtime" time handling, which is simple, fast (getting
> > > timing value itself is low-overhead) and modular-arithmetic by its
> > > nature.
> > 
> > I'm sorry, I don't understand. If you have 64-bit ints then why would
> > you use anything smaller for timestamps?
> 
> Because MicroPython stays close (== may stay close) to hardware and does
> not depend on any OS (even those smaller embedded OSes, which are
> called RTOS'es). Then, it's usual case for embedded hardware to have
> hardware timers of the same size or smaller as the architecture machine
> word. For example, on a 32-bit CPU, timers are usually 32-, 24-, or 16-
> bit. On 16-bit CPUs, timers are 16- or 8-bit.

I don't think such timers have a place in the CPython standard library,
though. Don't you have an additional namespace for micropython-specific
features?

Regards

Antoine.