[time-nuts] Cold Rubidium over hyped?

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

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In message <AABQ6M5M5AL26S8J at smtpout01.dca.untd.com>, cdelect at juno.com writes:

>Just wonder if some  5065A can get so impressive that they don't just
>make a modern large/cool cell classic Rubidium with modern electronics
>technology! Certainly would be cheaper and more long lived also.

But isn't that essentially what they have done ?

The Rb-lamp-filter thing has been beaten to death.  Its not like
people have not researched it in the last 50 years, but nobody
anywhere have found a way to get rid of the Rb/glass absorption
related aging or the pressure-sensitivity for that matter, so 5065
performance pretty much is the best you can ever hope for there
as long as your customers are terrestial.

Given that these two cold-Rb devices are 1st generation of their
kind and given how little time they have had to collect data on
them yet, both with respect to performance but also day-to-day
gremlin-wrangling, I wouldnt be at all surprised if the next
two generations of that concept delivers almost two orders of
magnitude improved performance.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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