[time-nuts] seeking a time/clock software architecture
Jim Lux
jimlux at earthlink.net
Fri Sep 23 22:13:04 UTC 2011
On 9/23/11 2:00 PM, Chris Howard wrote:
>
> Seems like a lot of unknowns. You would have to
> have sensors monitoring the sensors.
I think the "clock model" (insofar as variations in the oscillator) are
outside the scope, as long as the effect of that variation can be
represented cleanly.
For example, with a simple 2 term linear model t = clock/rate + offset,
you can describe the *effect* of a rate, and if the rate changes, the
model changes. As long as you keep track of the rates and offsets
you've used in the past, you can reconstruct what "clock" was for any t
or vice versa.
A clock model predictor might use all those factors to better estimate
the rate. Having a high order polynomial model might let you not need
to update the model parameters as often. That's a tradeoff the user
could make: Do I use a 2 or 3 term clock to time transformation, and
update it once a minute, or do I use a 20 term transformation, and
update it once a month.
>
> Do you lose too much by just maintaining a lifetime worst-case number, or
> maybe some kind of probability function?
Certainly one cannot do a worst-case number. Consider that you have two
endpoints that need to be synchronized within 1 millisecond. This
requires that the clocks at each end have known rate/offset to an
accuracy of around 1ppm for 1000 second time span. Assuming that you
have some magic means to measure this, you'd like to have a standard way
to describe the rate and offset (so that you don't have as many formats
as you do endpoints).
OK, so if you wanted an output from your Time API that gave you a
"estimated uncertainty of time" (think like the accuracy estimates from
GPS receivers), what would that look like?
Do you give a 1 sigma number? What about bounding values? (e.g. the
API returns "the time is 12:21:03.6315, standard deviation of 1.5
millisecond, but guaranteed in the range 12:21:03 to 12:21:04)
I would expect that a fancy implementation might return different
uncertainties for different times in the future (e.g. I might say that I
can schedule something with an accuracy of 1 millisecond in the next 10
minutes, but only within 30 milliseconds when it's 24 hours away)
The mechanics of how one might come up with this uncertainty estimate
are out of scope, but the semantics and format of how one reports it are
in scope for the architecture.
More information about the Time-nuts_lists.febo.com
mailing list