Building Fault-Tolerant Hardware Clocks from COTS Components

Research output: Contribution to conferences › Paper › Contributed › peer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Clocks with a bounded drift rate are an important tool in the construction of dependable applications. However, the drift rates of clocks provided by operating systems on some computing platforms are not always bounded, e.g. due to lost interrupts or leap seconds. We show how one can build clocks with a bounded drift rate from components off-the-shelf (COTS). Our approach can be used to achieve a tight synchronization with UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) in systems with access to at least one GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages20
Publication statusPublished - 1999
Peer-reviewedYes

Conference

TitleDependable Computing for Critical Applications 7, DCFTS 1999
Abbreviated titleDCFTS 1999
Conference number
Duration8 January 1999
Degree of recognitionInternational event
Location
CitySan Jose
CountryUnited States of America

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

DFG Classification of Subject Areas according to Review Boards

Keywords

  • Fault tolerance, Clocks, Synchronization, real timie systems, operating systems, Global Positioning system, Counting circuits, Switches, upper bound, COTS components, Bounded drift rate, dependable applications, interrupts, off-the-shelf components, UTC, Coordinated Universal time, Global positioning system, GPS receiver