The High Precision Event Timer is a hardware timer used in personal computers. It was developed jointly by Intel and Microsoft and has been incorporated in PC chipsets since circa 2005. Formerly referred to by Intel as a Multimedia Timer, the term HPET was selected to avoid confusion with the multimedia timers software feature introduced in the MultiMedia Extensions to Windows 3.0.
Older operating systems that do not support a hardware HPET device can only use older timing facilities, such as the programmable interval timer (PIT) or the real-time clock (RTC). Windows XP, when fitted with the latest HAL (hardware abstraction layer), can also use the processor's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) or Power Management Timer (PMTIMER), together with the RTC to provide operating system features that would, in later Windows versions, be provided by the HPET hardware. Confusingly, such XP systems quote "HPET" connectivity in the device driver manager even though the Intel HPET device is not being used.
Read more about High Precision Event Timer: Features, Applications, Comparison To Predecessors, Compatibility, Problems
Famous quotes containing the words high, precision and/or event:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slavesand the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnuts Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that theyll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (18601904)
“The frequency of personal questions grows in direct proportion to your increasing girth. . . . No one would ask a man such a personally invasive question as Is your wife having natural childbirth or is she planning to be knocked out? But someone might ask that of you. No matter how much you wish for privacy, your pregnancy is a public event to which everyone feels invited.”
—Jean Marzollo (20th century)