Timer coalescing

Timer coalescing is a computer system energy-saving technique that reduces central processing unit (CPU) power consumption by reducing the precision of software timers used for synchronization of process wake-ups, minimizing the number of times the CPU is forced to perform the relatively power-costly operation of entering and exiting idle states.

Implementations of timer coalescing

 * The Linux kernel gained support for deferrable timers in 2.6.22, and controllable "timer slack" for threads in 2.6.28 allowing timer coalescing.
 * Timer coalescing has been a feature of Microsoft Windows from Windows 7 onward.
 * Apple's XNU kernel based OS X gained support as of OS X Mavericks.
 * FreeBSD supports it since September 2010.