Precise Thread Sleep Needed. Max 1Ms Error

Precise thread sleep needed. Max 1ms error

From the question tags I suppose you are on windows.
Take a look at Multimedia Timers, they advertise precision under 1ms.
Another options is to use Spin Locks but this will basically keep a cpu core at maximum usage.

Accurate Sleep with cancellation

You shouldn't be implementing this at all.

In C++11 all basic necessary utilities for multithreading are implemented in the standard.
If you do not use C++11 - then switch to C++11 or higher - in the unfortunate case that you cannot, then use Boost which has the same features.

Basically, what you want to do with this functionality is covered by std::condition_variable. You can put a thread into waiting mode by using function wait (it accepts a condition function necessary for leaving the wait), wait_for and wait_until (same as wait but with total waiting time limit) as well as notify_one and notify_all methods that wake the sleeping threads (one or all) and make them check the awakening condition and proceed with their tasks.

Check out std::conditional_variable in the reference. Just google it and you'll find enough information about it with examples.

In case you do not trust std::conditional_variable implementation for some reason, you can still utilize it for mini waits and awakening.

What Thread sleep method is most precise: Monitor.Wait vs System.Timer vs DispatchTimer vs Threading.Timer

I have never actually used them myself, but Multimedia Timers are said to have the best resolution of any timer service in Windows. The .NET BCL does not have a wrapper for this timer service yet so you will have to do the P/Invoke calls yourself.

Another option might be to use Stopwatch together with some standard Thread.Sleep calls in a tight loop. I am not sure how much luck you would have with this approach, but it might be more accurate than a plain old Thread.Sleep call by itself. I have never tried it, but anything is worth a shot I suppose.

I did some experiments and I discovered that changing the thread priority to ThreadPriority.Highest made a considerable difference. It reduced the standard deviation of the interval by quite a bit on each technique I tried.

What Thread sleep method is most precise: Monitor.Wait vs System.Timer vs DispatchTimer vs Threading.Timer

I have never actually used them myself, but Multimedia Timers are said to have the best resolution of any timer service in Windows. The .NET BCL does not have a wrapper for this timer service yet so you will have to do the P/Invoke calls yourself.

Another option might be to use Stopwatch together with some standard Thread.Sleep calls in a tight loop. I am not sure how much luck you would have with this approach, but it might be more accurate than a plain old Thread.Sleep call by itself. I have never tried it, but anything is worth a shot I suppose.

I did some experiments and I discovered that changing the thread priority to ThreadPriority.Highest made a considerable difference. It reduced the standard deviation of the interval by quite a bit on each technique I tried.

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