Quote:
Originally Posted by compurandom
The technology to make small stand alone digital clocks that are accurate within a second per year has existed for at least 30 years. Why we have PCs that require network time synchronization to prevent their clock from drifting by minutes per day mystifies me.
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Interesting. I've always found that unless you happen to have an atomic clock which requires a very high degree of temperature control, you are not going to see even close to that accuracy. Given that most atomic clocks are now kept close to absolute zero, small is not a word to describe them. The solutions commonly found are generally use either a quartz crystal or ceramic resonator. The accuracy is susceptible to temperature changes, aging and a shopping list of other factors. The accuracy is about 15 seconds per month. Yes, mechanical pendulum clock did manage 1 second per year long before the digital era. As does the Citizen Calibre 0100 watch though the $16,800 price and limited production make it a rarity. My current watch is able to do much better but then it's not really a watch but rather a receiver and displayer of radio time signals.
In my working environment, a drift of a minute is enough to cause IT's telephones to ring off the wall so I feel very grateful to the inventors of NTP and those folk who keep the servers up and running.