Can LabVIEW threads sleep in increments less than a millisecon​d?

Question

I am aware of two LabVIEW sleep functions:
1) All Functions | Time & Dialog | "Wait (ms)"
2) All Functions | Time & Dialog | "Wait Until Next ms Multiple"
In this day and age, when 3GHz processors sell for less than $200, it seems to me that a millisecond is an eternity. Is there any way to tell your LabVIEW threads to sleep for something less than a millisecond?
In Java, the standard Thread.sleep() method is written in milliseconds [sorry, the bulletin board software won't let me link directly]:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/​Thread.html#sleep(long)
but there is a second version of the method that allows for the possiblity of nanoseconds:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/​Thread.html#sleep(long, int)
So there does seem to be some consensus that millisecond sleep times are getting a little long in the tooth...

Answer 1

Hi Tarheel !
May be you should get some idea of the kind of timing accuracy that you can reach when using a loop.
Use the attached vi, which runs repeatedly a For loop (10 iterations) reading the time, then calculate the average and standard deviation of the time difference between the loop iterations.
On my PC (P4, 2.6 MHz, W2K), I get a standard deviation of about 8 ms, which appears to be independent of the sleep duration I asked for.
Same thing with a timed loop.
Under MacOS X (PowerBook, 1.5GHz), the SD falls down to 0.4 ms.
I tried to disable most of the background processes running on my PC, but I could not get a better resolution.
Seems that the issue is not in LV but on the way the OS manage its internal reference clock.
Since you are a Java afficionado, may be you could produce something equivalent ?
A proof that nanosecond resolution is available on a PC could be of great help to NI. Why bother with costly timers on DAQ cards ?
By the way, it took me about one minute to create the attached vi. I would like to have an idea of the time required to do the same thing in Java.
Tempus fugit...
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Chilly Charly    (aka CC)
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Attachments:
Timing precision.zip ‏11 KB