interesting: simTime doesn't advance while the sim is in a hard loop ?

we've got some funky stuff going on server-side which has led to some investigation into the nature of time itself, with some sort of interesting results.

it looks like simTime is paused while the sim is in a hard-loop.
ie, not only does it not advance during the loop (expected) but it also doesn't catch up once the hard loop terminates.

check it,
here is some code (testSchedule) which first schedules an echo() for say ten seconds in the future, then goes into a hard sleep for twenty seconds. after the twenty seconds have elapsed, another ten seconds pass and then the echo() fires:

function echoSimTime(%s)
{
   echo(%s SPC getSimTime());
}

function scriptSleep(%ms)
{
   echo(getScopeName() SPC "starting" SPC getSimTime());
   schedule(0, 0, "echoSimTime", "started");
   
   %start = getRealTime();
   
   for (%delta = 0; %delta < %ms; %delta = mSubS32(getRealTime(), %start))
   {
   }
   
   echo(getScopeName() SPC "finished" SPC getSimTime());
   schedule(0, 0, "echoSimTime", "finished");
}


function testSchedule(%delay, %sleepTime)
{
   schedule(%delay, 0, "echoSimTime", "made it.");
   scriptSleep(%sleepTime);
}

[6/25/2009 16:12:32][Inf][General] ==>testSchedule(10000, 20000);
[6/25/2009 16:12:32][Inf][General] scriptSleep() starting 570797
[6/25/2009 16:12:52][Inf][General] scriptSleep() finished 570797
[6/25/2009 16:12:52][Wrn][General] Simulation is behind; 20021 ticks elapsed since last iteration. (no scope)
[6/25/2009 16:12:52][Inf][General] started 570797
[6/25/2009 16:12:52][Inf][General] finished 570797
[6/25/2009 16:13:01][Inf][General] made it. 580797

it's also interesting that the print "finished" appears *after* the "scriptSleep() finished" line, because the latter line is an immediate execution which comes before the former which is a schedule(0).