4 ms·
I thought about this too. But the timing plane is not typically available at the application level in telecom systems, nor would it be distributed to millions o
by toddh 14y ago
I thought about this too. But the timing plane is not typically available at the application level in telecom systems, nor would it be distributed to millions of different hosts, so it's not quite the same thing.
- jauer 14y agoTrue. So if I wanted to do it, how would I do it? a) Adopt NICs / order servers with proper chipset to support it: http://www.oreganosystems.at/?page_id=71 http://www.oreganosystems.at/?page_id=71 b) Broadcom has IEEE 1588 support in their reference designs so it wouldn't be too hard to bake into custom switches & server mobos: http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s535919 http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s535919 Interesting thing about that press release is in 2010 they mention uses as "service provider, data center and smart grid power control networks". Service provider & smart grid are the usual suspects as far as users of timing go. Who other than Google would need that kind of timing setup in a datacenter? Financial trading?
- mlmilleratmit 14y agoI think that Finance is indeed the obvious candidate. In neutrino experiments we've gotten pretty good at synchronized clocks with nanosecond resolution. Although (to be fair) we cheat and get some very useful information out of the beam itself, and neutrinos luckily don't travel on optical fibers. I'd be interested to research what it would actually take to provide nanosecond synchronization of clocks in at least a dozen data centers globally, distributed to millions of servers.