stimer

Stimer is an informal term used to describe a software timer, a timer mechanism implemented in software to schedule actions for a future moment or to occur periodically. Unlike hardware timers tied to a physical clock, stimers run within an operating system, runtime library, or application and rely on the system's time base to trigger a callback or event.

Typical stimer interfaces allow creating or arming a timer with a specified delay, starting it, canceling it, and querying remaining time. Timers can be one-shot (firing once) or periodic (firing repeatedly at a fixed interval). Some environments support high-resolution timing; others operate on coarser tick granularity. Most stimer implementations invoke a handler or post an event when the timer expires.

Stimers are used in virtually all platforms: to implement timeouts for input/output, to schedule deferred work, to manage user interface animations, or to implement retry logic. In event-driven and asynchronous systems, stimers integrate with the event loop or task scheduler, generating events rather than blocking threads.

Key considerations include timing accuracy and jitter, overhead from context switches, and thread-safety. In embedded and real-time contexts, determinism and minimal interrupt latency are important; some designs use separate timer queues or dedicated timer hardware to improve predictability.

Terminology varies; the concept is widely known as software timers or timer services, and "stimer" is not a standardized term. Documentation may clarify whether stimer refers to a single-shot or repeating timer, its API, and its integration with the system’s scheduler.