* Re: ObjectAda - no clock drift! [not found] <6m6f0t$1ue$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> @ 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Corey Ashford 1998-06-17 0:00 ` dennison 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Christopher Green 2 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Corey Ashford @ 1998-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dennison@telepath.com wrote in message <6m6f0t$1ue$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>... >Apparently, Aonix has made atomic clocks obsolete with the simple use of a >Wintel PC. > >The Ada rm in D.8 paragraph 41-43 requires vendors to give "an upper bound on >the drift rate of Clock with respect to real time." I was curious what my >Aonix ObjectAda compiler said, so I looked it up. > >The documentation Requirements section of the ObjectAda 7.1 NT docs (p 2-9) >has the following statement: There is no software clock drift. > >What is meant by this? Surely not what I think it's saying! I think it's saying that the way the software is written, it will not cause the current time to drift as a side-effect of the way it keeps time the way some algorithms do. However, if the hardware clock drifts, it has no control over that. - Corey ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: ObjectAda - no clock drift! 1998-06-17 0:00 ` ObjectAda - no clock drift! Corey Ashford @ 1998-06-17 0:00 ` dennison 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Robert A Duff 1998-06-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 0 siblings, 2 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: dennison @ 1998-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <6m7r5m$4gn$1@usenet.rational.com>, "Corey Ashford" <corSPAMey@rational.com> wrote: > > > dennison@telepath.com wrote in message <6m6f0t$1ue$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>... > >The Ada rm in D.8 paragraph 41-43 requires vendors to give "an upper bound > on > >the drift rate of Clock with respect to real time." I was curious what my ... > >has the following statement: There is no software clock drift. . > I think it's saying that the way the software is written, it will not cause > the current > time to drift as a side-effect of the way it keeps time the way some > algorithms do. However, if the hardware clock drifts, it has no control > over that. Ahh. I think my confusion came from assuming they were answering the question that was asked. :-) The RM says "An upper bound on the drift rate of Clock with respect to REAL TIME." (emphasis mine) Aonix gave me an answer with respect to the system clock. Those are clearly not the same thing. So someone looking here for Clock's drift rate with respect to real time will not get it. In all fairness to Aonix, there's no way they could know what the clock drift rate for the hardware in any particular PC is. But they should have said that, rather than answering half the question in an incredibly terse manner. I guess I was mostly posting this to see if this is a just a farcical non- compliance with the documentation standard, or if I'm misunderstanding the standard. There are several other examples I could site, but this one was the funniest. From the seriousness of the responses I'm getting, it looks like this level of "compliance" is probably typical. Its annoying to think that I'm going to have to stop and analyze all their answers now to make sure they are really answering the question that was asked. T.E.D. -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: ObjectAda - no clock drift! 1998-06-17 0:00 ` dennison @ 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Robert A Duff 1998-06-18 0:00 ` dennison 1998-06-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1 sibling, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Robert A Duff @ 1998-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dennison@telepath.com writes: > I guess I was mostly posting this to see if this is a just a farcical non- > compliance with the documentation standard, or if I'm misunderstanding the > standard. I think the Documentation Requirements in the RM shouldn't be there at all. You can't legislate good documentation. If you try, you get the sort of documentation you're complaining about -- totally useless information, intended purely to satisfy the letter of the law. Note that the validation process makes no attempt to verify that Documentation Requirements are met properly. If the vendor had written, "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" as the answer to that question, they would still be just as validated. - Bob -- Change robert to bob to get my real email address. Sorry. -- Change robert to bob to get my real email address. Sorry. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: ObjectAda - no clock drift! 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Robert A Duff @ 1998-06-18 0:00 ` dennison 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: dennison @ 1998-06-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <wccbtrrpwle.fsf@world.std.com>, Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> wrote: > > dennison@telepath.com writes: > > > I guess I was mostly posting this to see if this is a just a farcical non- > > compliance with the documentation standard, or if I'm misunderstanding the > > standard. > > I think the Documentation Requirements in the RM shouldn't be there at > all. You can't legislate good documentation. If you try, you get the > sort of documentation you're complaining about -- totally useless > information, intended purely to satisfy the letter of the law. I'm beginning to agree with you. I only spotted this because it was so outlandish. There seems to be lots of good information about the compiler in this section, but now I can't trust *any* of it. > Note that the validation process makes no attempt to verify that > Documentation Requirements are met properly. If the vendor had written, > "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" as the answer to that question, they would > still be just as validated. I guess that explains why they answered 18 of the doc req's as "To be determined". Surely that means any day now they will have all those things determined and will send me an addendum to the docs. I'll think I'll go check my mail for a package from Aonix right now! :-) T.E.D. -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: ObjectAda - no clock drift! 1998-06-17 0:00 ` dennison 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Robert A Duff @ 1998-06-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1998-06-18 0:00 ` tedennison 1 sibling, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1998-06-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <6m904m$vv0$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, dennison@telepath.com writes: > In all fairness to Aonix, there's no way they could know what the clock drift > rate for the hardware in any particular PC is. But they should have said that, > rather than answering half the question in an incredibly terse manner. Well, Aonix was describing a compiler, not a computing system. If the RM applies to compilers rather than computing systems, _it_ should provide the wording that excludes drift beyond the control of compilers. On the other hand, some of the responses in this group have indicated that the intentional style of the RM is terse. If so, Aonix would seem to be fully justified in responding in the same style. Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: ObjectAda - no clock drift! 1998-06-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1998-06-18 0:00 ` tedennison 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: tedennison @ 1998-06-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <1998Jun17.221533.1@eisner>, Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam wrote: > > In article <6m904m$vv0$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, dennison@telepath.com writes: > > > In all fairness to Aonix, there's no way they could know what the clock drift > > rate for the hardware in any particular PC is. But they should have said that, > > rather than answering half the question in an incredibly terse manner. > > Well, Aonix was describing a compiler, not a computing system. > > If the RM applies to compilers rather than computing systems, > _it_ should provide the wording that excludes drift beyond the > control of compilers. Perhaps, but compilers for many single-vendor non-PC platforms certianly could supply this information. It looks like the RM had just this in mind, with compilers for PC's and some platform "families" being forced to use the weasel words. Additionally, I could see where the the disctinction between the two kinds of drift could get really blurry on platforms where Calendar doesn't have OS support. Even when the platform's drift isn't known, I could still get an answer like "0 + F, where F is the clock drift of the hardware", or "10 + F + G where F is the clock drift of the hardware in seconds per month and G is the clock drift of the underlying operating system in seconds per month". T.E.D. -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: ObjectAda - no clock drift! [not found] <6m6f0t$1ue$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> 1998-06-17 0:00 ` ObjectAda - no clock drift! Corey Ashford @ 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Christopher Green 2 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1998-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <6m6f0t$1ue$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, dennison@telepath.com writes: > The Ada rm in D.8 paragraph 41-43 requires vendors to give "an upper bound on > the drift rate of Clock with respect to real time." I was curious what my > Aonix ObjectAda compiler said, so I looked it up. > > The documentation Requirements section of the ObjectAda 7.1 NT docs (p 2-9) > has the following statement: There is no software clock drift. > > What is meant by this? Surely not what I think it's saying! Since you express surprise, I would concur that it must not be what you were thinking, whatever that is. I believe that Aonix is saying that the software they supply introduces no drift, and if you see drift you should take it up with Intel (or Cyrix, or AMD). Since Aonix does not sell hardware, I don't know how much further they can go (aside from saying you might also take it up with DEC/Compaq or Samsung, but they don't support Alpha the last I heard (drift-free or not)). Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: ObjectAda - no clock drift! [not found] <6m6f0t$1ue$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> 1998-06-17 0:00 ` ObjectAda - no clock drift! Corey Ashford 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Christopher Green 2 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Christopher Green @ 1998-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <6m6f0t$1ue$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <dennison@telepath.com> wrote: >Apparently, Aonix has made atomic clocks obsolete with the simple use of a >Wintel PC. > >The Ada rm in D.8 paragraph 41-43 requires vendors to give "an upper bound on >the drift rate of Clock with respect to real time." I was curious what my >Aonix ObjectAda compiler said, so I looked it up. > >The documentation Requirements section of the ObjectAda 7.1 NT docs (p 2-9) >has the following statement: There is no software clock drift. > >What is meant by this? Surely not what I think it's saying! > >T.E.D. I *think* what this means is that there is nothing in ObjectAda to make the clock drift on "Wintel" hosts any worse than it already is. If clock drift with respect to real time is important to you, you should not be relying on the unaided operating system clock of a "Wintel" host, or any product that derives its clock from such a clock. NTP has been ported to Windows NT. I do not know how effective it is at disciplining the clock on NT; it is generally effective on Unix hosts. Visit http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp for details. -- Chris Green Email cgreen@atc.com Advanced Technology Center Phone (949) 583-9119 22982 Mill Creek Drive ext. 220 Laguna Hills, CA 92653 Fax (949) 583-9213 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1998-06-18 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 8+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- [not found] <6m6f0t$1ue$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> 1998-06-17 0:00 ` ObjectAda - no clock drift! Corey Ashford 1998-06-17 0:00 ` dennison 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Robert A Duff 1998-06-18 0:00 ` dennison 1998-06-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1998-06-18 0:00 ` tedennison 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1998-06-17 0:00 ` Christopher Green
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