cyclictest(8) is the canonical tool for starting out down this pathway. That measures basic kernel stuff relevant to this area of inquiry. However, since actua

cyclictest(8) is the canonical tool for starting out down this pathway. That measures basic kernel stuff relevant to this area of inquiry. However, since actual context switch times depend a lot on working set size, ultimately you can't measure this stuff accurately unless you instrument the actual application code you are working with. A sample playback engine is going to have very different performance characteristics than an EQ plugin, even if there is theoretically more actual computation going on in the latter.