The first guess is that this parameter allows switching process context of the kernel by changing a scale factor for the frequency of clock ticks.
It is an unexpected step of IBM who has done nothing new in this direction since OS/2 Warp 3.0.
This novelty is very important for multimedia applications and tasks close to RealTime.
Url: ftp://testcase.boulder.ibm.com/ps/fromibm/os2/
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