Paul Gilmartin writes:
Yet I wonder, beyond uniqueness, can there ever be any perceived violation
of monotonicity?
Might one processor do a STCK, then send a signal to another processor
which, in turn does its
STCK and sees a value (including the TOD register content) algebraically
less than the one that
demonstrably happend earlier?
Substituting STCKE values for at best obsolescent STCK values in the above,
it is clear that for two STCKE values a, b
a||<programmable value0>
b||<programmable value1>
and a < b,
a||<programmable value0> < b||<programmable value1>
obtains for all values of <programmable value0> and <programmable value1>.
Consider
<programmable value0> = 'zzz', <programmable value1> = 'aaa', it is still
the case that
a||'zzz' < b||'aaa'
for all a < b. This, of course, is why the programmable field occupies the
rightmost two bytes of an STCKE value.
The triviality of this argument suggests that the thrust of Terence's
injunction to think before one speaks has somehow been lost and needs to be
recovered here.
John Gilmore
Ashland, MA 01721
USA
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