This is a somewhat unrelated question, but why not eliminate the servo?

If a software entity is the consumer of PTP time, I wonder if the benefit
of avoiding the y=mx+b computation (to compute PTP time from the time of
the free-running LAN hardware counter) is worth the trouble of disciplining
the hardware clock.

In other words, the hardware engine maintains a time reference and software
maintains the parameters for translating that time reference to PTP time
(also for hardware-captured Rx and Tx timestamps).  Of course, this doesn't
apply to one-step master ports.

Thoughts?

Kevin Stanton.


On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 1:38 AM, Tal Mizrahi <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Harlan,
>
> >In the "Figure 1" case "core" packet timestamps come from the kernel and
> the new packet timestamp will be added by the hardware engine.
> >I understand the following question is outside the scope of this
> document, but how can one determine how well sync'd the internal clock is
> with the clock in the accurate timestamp engine?
>
> Well, indeed it is strictly an implementation question. For example, in
> typical PTP implementations (that I am familiar with) the accurate clock is
> only maintained in one place, i.e., in the HW engine. The SW stack includes
> the servo algorithm; the SW stack regularly computes the necessary offset
> or frequency adjustments, and whenever necessary sends update commands to
> the HW engine about these adjustments. Thus, the SW stack does not need to
> maintain an additional clock, since all its computations are performed WRT
> the HW clock.
>
> Thanks,
> Tal.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Harlan Stenn [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 10:09 AM
> To: Tal Mizrahi
> Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [ntpwg] New version of draft-mizrahi-ntp-checksum-trailer
>
> Just some thoughts, and I hope I'm awake enough to type this...
>
> There seem to be several issues here.
>
> In the "Figure 1" case "core" packet timestamps come from the kernel and
> the new packet timestamp will be added by the hardware engine.  I
> understand the following question is outside the scope of this document,
> but how can one determine how well sync'd the internal clock is with the
> clock in the accurate timestamp engine?
>
> If we have TX and RX hardware timestamping capabilities, we can use NTP's
> interleave mode to communicate these timestamps as well.  Having said that,
> I'm sure there is something to be learned from implementing Tal's proposal.
>
> H
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