cputicks

A Rust port of libcpucycles for high-resolution timing.

Provides sub-nanosecond timing by directly reading hardware counters (RDTSC, CNTVCT_EL0, etc.) with automatic runtime selection of the best available source. ~30x faster than std::time::Instant.

use cputicks::Ticks;

let start = Ticks::now();
// ... work ...
println!("{:?}", start.elapsed().as_duration());

println!("Using: {} @ {} Hz", Ticks::implementation(), Ticks::frequency());

CLI

$ cargo run --bin cputicks --release
cputicks v0.1.0

Implementation: aarch64-cntvct
Frequency:      24000000 Hz (24.00 MHz)
Overhead:       650 ps per call
Resolution:     0 ticks (0 ps)

Platform Support

Architecture	Primary	Fallback
x86_64	✓ RDTSC	✓ OS timer
x86	✓ RDTSC	✓ OS timer
aarch64	✓ CNTVCT_EL0	✓ OS timer
aarch64 (Linux)	✓ PMCCNTR_EL0	✓ CNTVCT_EL0
riscv64	✓ rdcycle	✓ OS timer
powerpc64	✓ mftb	✓ OS timer
s390x	✓ stckf	✓ OS timer
loongarch64	✓ rdtime.d	✓ OS timer
other		✓ OS timer

OS timers: mach_absolute_time (macOS), clock_gettime (Unix), Instant (other)

Benchmarks

Apple M1 (aarch64-cntvct @ 24 MHz):

Operation	Time
Ticks::now()	658 ps
Ticks::now() + elapsed()	882 ps
std::time::Instant::now()	20.0 ns
std::time::Instant (now + elapsed)	43.3 ns