Understanding the Microkernel's Concept of Time

Whether you're working with timers or simply getting the time of day, it's important that you understand how the OS works with time.

The first thing to consider is: what's a tick?

When you're dealing with timing, every moment within the microkernel is referred to as a tick. A tick is measured in milliseconds; its initial length is determined by the clock rate of your processor:

• If your CPU is 40 MHz or better, a tick is 1 ms.
• For slower processors, a tick represents 10 ms.

Programmatically you can change the clock period via the ClockPeriod() function.