I chose 1000 originally partly as a way to make sure that people that assumed HZ was 100 would get a swift kick in the pants.

— Linus Torvalds, Re: [PATCH] i386: Selectable Frequency of the Timer Interrupt (2005)

Source: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/Pine.LNX.4.58.0507081505230.17536@g5.osdl.org/

From a 2005 kernel mailing-list reply about timer frequency.

Topics: programming