It’s deeper than that. See the paper on time in distributed systems by Lamport:
https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/time-clocks.pdfThere’s a relativity-like issue where it’s impossible to have a globally consistent view of time.
See IR2 for how to synchronize physical time in a distributed system.
“(a) If Pg sends a message m at physical time t, then m contains a timestamp Tm= C/(t). (b) Upon receiving a message m at time t', process P/ sets C/(t') equal to maximum (Cj(t' - 0), Tm + /Zm).”
I think the formula is saying that the clocks will only ever increase (i.e. drift upwards). If so, then you could imagine two processes leapfrogging if one of them sends a message that bumps the other’s clock, then that one sends a message back that bumps the first.
But I’m curious how it behaves if one of the clocks is running faster, e.g. a satellite has a physically different sense of time than an observer on the ground.
Also note the paper claims you can’t get rid of clocks if you want to totally order the events.
There’s a relativity-like issue where it’s impossible to have a globally consistent view of time.
See IR2 for how to synchronize physical time in a distributed system.
“(a) If Pg sends a message m at physical time t, then m contains a timestamp Tm= C/(t). (b) Upon receiving a message m at time t', process P/ sets C/(t') equal to maximum (Cj(t' - 0), Tm + /Zm).”
I think the formula is saying that the clocks will only ever increase (i.e. drift upwards). If so, then you could imagine two processes leapfrogging if one of them sends a message that bumps the other’s clock, then that one sends a message back that bumps the first.
But I’m curious how it behaves if one of the clocks is running faster, e.g. a satellite has a physically different sense of time than an observer on the ground.
Also note the paper claims you can’t get rid of clocks if you want to totally order the events.