A great effort was untertaken to wean kernels from relying on regular ticks[0][1]. This benefits power consumption on mobile devices but also makes it easier to

A great effort was untertaken to wean kernels from relying on regular ticks[0][1]. This benefits power consumption on mobile devices but also makes it easier to dedicate some cores 100% to latency-sensitive tasks. Specifically on windows applications have been optimized to make less use of the QueryPerformanceCounter API because it causes the kernel to wake up cores more frequently, again increasing power consumption. Browsers also clamp the frequency of timer wakeups in background tabs to reduce wasted CPU cycles. A javascript in a browser waking up once a second doesn't matter much. But hundreds of browser scripts and smartphone apps all waking up once a second at different offsets effectively means waking up every few milliseconds. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/549580/ https://lwn.net/Articles/549580/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickless_kernel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickless_kernel