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by kentonv 3187 days ago
If you don't provide (real) time as an input to the program, then non-determinism of time does not affect determinism of the program. At least, in theory. It's definitely a long way from there to practice.
1 comments

That's true -- but "the program" is also any code using yours as a middle-step, which is the case of a network service is a huge number of people. So anything that requires total program control rather than subroutine enforced safety is a nonstarter.

The timing may occur outside of your control, and then statistical profiling used. If the timing of a reponse to a network request has a time component that depends on shared load, then you have a side-channel.