5 ms·
Relativistic time is a real thing in distributed systems, even without worrying about einsteinian relativity; the premise of physics relativity is that perfect
by dnautics 7y ago
Relativistic time is a real thing in distributed systems, even without worrying about einsteinian relativity; the premise of physics relativity is that perfect synchronization is impossible and that is highly analogous to the impossibility to perfectly synchronize nodes in a distributed system.
- senderista 7y agoThere is a nice analogy between causal relations in special relativity and in asynchronous distributed systems, but it is no more than an analogy. Synchronized clocks are a physically feasible possibility in every realistic distributed system I’ve seen. The difficulties are merely of a technical nature.
- dTal 7y agoThe effects of relativity are non-negligible in GPS, which is essentially nothing but a distributed system on synchronized clocks.
- dnautics 7y agoSure, you can get sufficiently close, and at what cost in terms of developer effort and physical infrastructure? Not everyone is Google, and in most cases if you explicitly have code that doesn't assume synchronicity you will avoid footguns that inexperienced devs will make.