[time-nuts] Re: "software TCXO" on commodity computers

[Bernd Neubig]

Strange enough that the frequency error vs. temperature has a shape just
opposite to that of a tuning fork crystal, where the vertex ("turning
point")of the parabola is the maximum frequency.

Bernd

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Jeremy Elson [mailto:jelson at gmail.com] 
Gesendet: Montag, 4. April 2022 20:59
An: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
<time-nuts at lists.febo.com>
Betreff: [time-nuts] "software TCXO" on commodity computers

This just won the Best Paper award at NSDI 2022:

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/nsdi22-paper-najafi_1.pdf

It's a clever idea: they observe that most commodity computer motherboards
have temperature sensors onboard, and found a correlation between clock
frequency and the output of that temperature sensor. Using that model they
were able to build a "pure software TCXO" that maintains frequency an order
of magnitude better than the typical performance of a crystal without the
corrections.
_______________________________________________
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at lists.febo.com -- To unsubscribe send an
email to time-nuts-leave at lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to and follow the
instructions there.