Right, that's the problem I'm describing.
> or just pick one (or several) std::chrono base durations such as standardizing on nanoseconds, and then just count floating-point ticks.
None of this really fits well -- the idea is to count in integer ticks (invariant cycles), without doing expensive division or floating point math. It's like steady clock, but in ticks instead of nanos.
> (invariant cycles)
All major CPUs have had invariant cycle counters for decades at this point. It is a runtime constant.
When discussing hardware clock ticks used for time measurement, the ticks from TSC or similar counters are meant and not ticks from some counter that counts cycles of the CPU clock, like provided by the performance counters.
The variable CPU clock frequency can be measured by computing the ratio between the ticks accumulated by the corresponding performance counter and the ticks accumulated by the TSC (or similar counter), for which the clock frequency is constant and known.