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Date:      Fri, 21 Aug 1998 11:10:23 -0700 (PDT)
From:      David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com>
To:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, rkw@Dataplex.NET
Subject:   Re: proposal to not change time_t
Message-ID:  <199808211810.LAA05293@pau-amma.whistle.com>
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b203323fc2e9@[208.2.87.13]>

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>Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 09:35:51 -0500
>From: Richard Wackerbarth <rkw@Dataplex.NET>

>You are correct that time precision, by itself, will never solve the
>multi-processor race condition that you describe.

>Rather than use the completion time of the operation, we should be using
>the starting time. This, coupled with the requirement, in "make" that
>the result always be "newer", by at least one tick, than each of its
>inputs will cause the results to be correct.

I would expect that if you're concerned with timestamps generated by
multi-processing systems, that it might be worth considering using a CPU
number as the last few bits of the timestamp -- beyond the accuracy of
anything "real" -- as a tie-breaker.

As I recall, this is the technique IBM used on the s/3x0 "store clock"
instruction....

david
-- 
David Wolfskill		UNIX System Administrator
dhw@whistle.com		voice: (650) 577-7158	pager: (650) 371-4621

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