Like Clock Work

Timing is everything, which is why I was alarmed that National Clock Month almost slipped past. No need to get that excited, however, since October is also National Apple Month, National Dessert Month, National Roller Skating Month, National Stamp Collecting Month, National Popcorn Popping Month, Polish American History Month, and (my favorite) National Pizza Month.

As far back as th 17th century, clocks and computing have gone hand-in-hand (and not just the hour hand and minute hand). In 1624, for instance, a fellow named Schickard built a "calculating clock" that could add and subtract. Since then, clocks have become fundamental to programming, whether your trying to crank up the performance of your system or need to track data in real time. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that Dr. Dobb's and other programmer pubs have published lots of articles involving clocks, including

• "Using the Real-Time Clock", by Kenneth Roach.
• "C/C++ in Embedded Chronographs", by William Smith.
• "Lies, Misdirection, and Real-Time Measurements", by Cort Dougan and Zwane Mwaikambo.
• "Using 1KHz Interrupts On AT Clones", by Paul A. Cornelius.
• "A Simple Real-Time Executive" by Chuck Allison,
• "A Polled Timer Class", by J. David Wendel.
• "Real Time Zones", by Ed Nisley.
• "Timed Callbacks in C++", by Christian Stapfer.

And these articles are just the start.

You'd think that after all this time, however, that clock-related issues would be passe', at least when it comes to computing. That's far from being the case, however.

Concurrency, multi-threading, and multi-core processors will likely be changing this, at least to some degree. As Herb Sutter points out in his article "A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software" instead of driving clock speeds ever higher, devleopers will be instead turning to hyperthreading and multi-core architectures.

And believe it or not, clocks can mean business. Most recently, for instance, Cypress Semiconductor has spun out the assets and intellectual property PC clock business into a new and independent company called Spectra Linear.

The transaction calls for the transfer of Cypress's frequency timing generators and buffers optimized for desktop and notebook computers, computer servers and memory modules to Spectra Linear. It does not include Cypress' general-purpose clock offerings of fixed and programmable timing products.

As for me, I'm still having trouble with this daylight savings thing. Now is it "spring forward" and "fall back" or the other way around?

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:42 AM  Permalink