strange system clock issues

[Ben Scott]

  Hmmm.  I just checked my home PC, which has a multi-core processor:

$ grep -i -e timer -e rtc /proc/interrupts
  0:        169          0   IO-APIC-edge      timer
  8:         63          0   IO-APIC-edge      rtc0
LOC:     211539     255493   Local timer interrupts
$ uptime
 23:01:20 up 39 min,  3 users,  load average: 0.18, 0.21, 0.29
$

  IRQ0 seems to be changing very slowly; maybe once per minute as I've
been watching it.  IRQ8 is not changing.  The "LOC" timer is changing
many times per second.  Presumably this is some kind of consequence of
the mutliprocessor setup.

-- Ben