Poughkeepsie Chapter of the Association For Computing Machinery

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Topic

Massive Improvements in the Accuracy of Computer Clocks

Speaker

Kurt Rosenfeld

When

Monday,       7:30 PM

Where

Marist College, Hancock Center (Building 16 on map), Room 2023. We thank Marist College for hosting the chapter's meetings. Parking: 1) Lot north of Hancock Center. We are permitted to park there in spite of the signs. 2) Lot on south-east corner of Route 9 and Fulton Street. Take staircase at south-west corner of lot, and tunnel under Route 9.

More Information

This program is free and open to the public. Attendees should RSVP at Meetup.com.

All are welcome to join us beforehand for dinner at the Palace Diner at 6:00 PM.

For further information, go to Pok.ACM.org (QR code below):

QR code RSVP to ACM Poughkeepsie at   Meetup.com

About the Topic

In the past thirty years commodity servers have gotten 10,000 times faster, mostly because of VLSI improvements. In those same years, clock accuracy improved a similar amount, but for different reasons. This talk will discuss how 50 nanosecond accuracy is achieved in 2024 using off-the-shelf hardware.

We will begin with what accuracy means in the context of computer clocks. Then we'll examine some of the motivations for higher clock accuracy: distributed systems, regulatory requirements, scientific applications. The main part of the talk will be a concise introduction to the technologies that have enabled recent accuracy improvements, e.g., IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol and the architecture of high performance GPS-based time servers.

About the Speaker

Kurt is a lifelong electronics and computer hobbyist. He worked as a software engineer at Google on the development of their internal precision clock synchronization systems. He holds an M.S. in EE and a Ph.D. in computer science. In his spare time he operates a wiki for documenting the history of measurement instruments.

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