Methods and systems for providing a distributed clock as a service
US12212643B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jun 30, 2021 |
| Grant date | Jan 28, 2025 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Nov 11, 2042 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F2009/45595
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Tenants in data centers may want access to high precision clocks without having to run their own PTP stacks or reference clocks. Furthermore, different tenants may want their workloads synchronized to their own secured clock domain. PTP, the currently dominant synchronization protocol, allows for only 256 clock domains (CDs). Virtual CDs (vCDs) virtualize the concept of clock domains by maintaining a hardware clock within a host computer, receiving a network clock domain packet that includes a clock domain identifier and an origin timestamp produced by a reference clock, using the network clock domain packet to synchronize the hardware clock to the reference clock, and using the hardware clock to provide a hardware timestamp value to a virtual machine (VM) running on the host computer or to a process running on the host computer, wherein the hardware clock is secured from manipulation by the VM or by the process.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.