[time-nuts] Win XP and NIST time

Anthony G. Atkielski anthony at atkielski.com
Thu Mar 28 01:18:33 UTC 2013


Orin writes:

> If you use those, you have to lock the thread you are timing to one
> CPU/Core as the performance counters are per CPU/Core and can get
> out of step. Or you can force your thread onto one CPU for the
> QueryPerformanceCounter call. This seems to be a bad idea to me as
> it would add an indeterminate time before querying the counter
> (indeterminate as if you are running on a different CPU, the OS
> would have to switch to the one you requested).

In the WWV3 program I posted about some time ago, I use these calls to
precisely calculate sleep times between second pulses, with excellent
results (accurate to within human perception, not sure about
microsecond accuracy). This does not mean that the timing cannot be
temporarily off for one beep, but overall it is extremely precise.

This was the only solution I could find for getting the sleep times
correct, since they vary from one second to the next depending on how
much time the program actually slept on the previous call (Windows
does not guarantee that sleep times will be exact). The resolution for
sleeping is also one millisecond, as I recall, and you need better
timing than that in order to keep the beeps consistent.

Generally, though, if you don't have an application or system function
stalling the system, and the hardware is fast enough, you should be
able to get away with all sorts of real-time use, as long as you
accept that one day the machine might miss something (preferably not
during a Cat III ILS approach).

--
Anthony




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