In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jim Bryant writes:
>since there is only a single master clock oscillator, there really
>should be no frequency difference between CPUs.
As long it runs constantly: yes. As soon as you have clock-stop
events you will have different resync times for the on-chip PLLs.
>Ideally, motherboards should be
>designed to have equal length clock lines to each CPU,
They are, but that doesn't mean that the PLL'ed core frequencies
are in lockstep when the clocks change.
>the current price of accurate TCXOs is low enough to be economical in
>PCs, and these seriously reduce the drift compared to the cheezy TTL
>clocks currently used.
There are no cheesy TTL clocks used. There are random encapsulated
rock with pretty high-quality drive circuitry and PLL generation
of all sorts of other frequencies.
>speaking of atomic breakdown... they could start making cheaper
>cesium-beam tubes given the current level of the nuclear waste issue
The actual amount of Cs in the Cesium unit has no cost impact. There
are man components of a Cs unit which carry significantly higher
pricetags than the few grammes of Cs. A un-optimally constructed
Cs is worse than a low-cost Rb unit.
>Cesium beam tubes are essentially extremely accurate
>narrow bandwidth filters, and not oscillators.
It is neither.
>with russia having made two seperate threats of aggression to destroy
>the entire planet with nuclear weapons in the past twelve months [...]
Lets not get too far from the topic, OK ?
--
Poul-Henning Kamp FreeBSD coreteam member
[EMAIL PROTECTED] "Real hackers run -current on their laptop."
FreeBSD -- It will take a long time before progress goes too far!
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