[FreeBSD-Announce] Foundation Funds last project for 2010!
Deb Goodkin
deb at freebsdfoundation.org
Tue Dec 21 16:26:20 UTC 2010
Dear FreeBSD Community,
The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that Julien Ridoux and
Darryl Veitch at the University of Melbourne have been awarded a grant
to implement support of feed-forward clock synchronization algorithms.
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is widely used for synchronization over
the network and the ntpd daemon is the current reference synchronization
algorithm. The system clock in FreeBSD is currently designed with ntpd
in mind, leading to strong feedback coupling between the kernel and the
synchronization daemon.
The RADclock ( http://www.cubinlab.ee.unimelb.edu.au/radclock/ ) is an
example of an alternative class of synchronization algorithms based on
feed-forward principles. This project will provide the core support for
feed-forward algorithms, so that alternatives to ntpd can be developed
and tested. The central motivation for this is the strong potential of
such approaches for highly robust and accurate synchronization.
Beyond this, virtualization is one of the next major challenges faced by
time keeping systems. The current feedback synchronization model is
complex and introduces its own dynamics, an approach that is not suited
to the requirements of virtualization. Feed-forward based
synchronization offers a cleaner and simpler approach, which is capable
of providing accurate time keeping over live migration of virtual machines.
This project will conclude in March 2011.
Sincerely,
The FreeBSD Foundation
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