> Therefore for a set of "conforming" SMP systems which don't
> have the listed 3 issues, we provide a feasible solution.
> I don't see how we can avoid this - unless we don't care about
> getting time right.
Interesting. I guess you only need to get time "right enough" -
there's an unavoidable fuzziness about the synchronisation of events
on different CPUs (corresponding to the uncertainties of the timing of
any rendezvous between them).
A naive network synchronisation protocol - analogous to your first
proposal - would leave clocks differing by a network round-trip time
or so: but NTP does a lot better. So in principle you should be able
to scale NTP to create a clock synchronised within some fraction of
the time taken by a CPU-to-CPU communication... but compressing the
essence of the NTP protocol into something which runs fast enough
might be interesting!
My 5-minutes-over-breakfast feeling is that you should be able to
figure out a way to get time right enough; try reading up how NTP
works and see whether it can be made to work?
--
Dominic
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