Time is an Illusion.

The article discusses timekeeping in distributed computing systems. Particular focus is given to problems surrounding synchronization and syntonization. Details on Network Time Protocol (NTP) and on the ways in which computers' quartz crystals are affected by environmental conditions are presented....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Communications of the ACM Vol. 59; no. 1; pp. 50 - 56
Main Author:	NEVILLE-NEIL, GEORGE V.
Format:	Article
Published:	Association for Computing Machinery Jan2016
Subjects:	Timekeeping Distributed computing Synchronization Network Time Protocol (Computer network protocol) Quartz crystals
Online Access:	View this record in EBSCOhost

Description
Summary:	The article discusses timekeeping in distributed computing systems. Particular focus is given to problems surrounding synchronization and syntonization. Details on Network Time Protocol (NTP) and on the ways in which computers' quartz crystals are affected by environmental conditions are presented. Other topics include the use of Precision Time Protocol (PTP) in high-frequency trading (HFT) and the variations in packet transit time between master and slave systems, also known as jitter.