[leif]

FTA: "Assuming servers are kept synchronized enough (the enough depending on your application), you may just solve the problem by acquiring time precisely enough."

How on earth are "sub-microsecond timers" supposed to be synchronized anywhere?

[dclusin]

We have special hardware that syncs our servers to an atomic clock in Colorado. It's about +/- microseconds off. Not sure about sub microsecond tho. Another problem with this is you will run into clock drift and NTP time adjustment bugs. Honestly I stopped reading once he mentioned that time was going to be his secret sauce. There are just too many subtle issues with using that as your globally unique identifier.

[apaprocki]

If I'm reading the spec sheets correctly, the datacenter rubidium/gps clocks typically used advertise < 5x10^-9 (worst case) to < 5x10^-11 (best case) accuracy.

[dclusin]

Which spec sheet? Would like to read more about these.

[apaprocki]

Something like this:

http://www.spectracomcorp.com/Desktopmodules/Bring2Mind/DMX/...

The units are a bit confusing but the accuracy still translates down to a handful of nanoseconds per month, I believe.

[profquail]

Precision Time Protocol: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_Time_Protocol

[leif]

OK but the point in the article is to reduce reliance on shared state. This doesn't work in a database.

[noselasd]

Or a GPS disciplined clock

[yodaiken]

This is very possible with high quality software, for example, see http://fsmlabs.com