On Nov 3, 2014, at 12:53 PM, Brooks Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 2014-11-03 02:19 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
>> On Nov 3, 2014, at 11:11 AM, Brooks Harris <[email protected]>
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>> CAUTION about the PTP Epoch. Its not "just nitpicking”.
>>> 
>> ...
>> 
>>> We've been advised by PTP experts that A) yes, its confusing, and B) most 
>>> implementations use a integral-second interpretation, as in Table B.1. I 
>>> understand the "escape clause" they use to justify this is the "(POSIX) 
>>> algorithms" phrase in Note 1 of 7.2.2 Epoch. By "(POSIX) algorithms" they 
>>> mean "gmtime()" and (strict) POSIX "ticks" at 1Hz, so, integral seconds. In 
>>> any event its really the only interpretation that yields a manageable, 
>>> practical, implementation that is consistent with TAI and UTC, NTP, and 
>>> common-use of POSIX.
>>> 
>> A few years ago, I had to produce TAI-like data from a measurement system. 
>> We defined the value as “seconds since 1970” but the technical definition 
>> was "number of SI seconds since 1 Jan 1972 00:00:00 UTC + 10 + 
>> #seconds-in-1970&71” to avoid the ambiguity. Given that our chief time 
>> scientist suggested this, and they were quite involved in PTP…
> 
> I assume you mean "number of SI seconds since 1 Jan 1972 00:00:00 UTC + 10 - 
> #seconds-in-1970&71” ? And the "#seconds-in-1970&71” is (2 * 365 * 86400), 
> right? That would be coincident with the PTP Epoch as interpreted above, that 
> is, "seconds since 1970 (TAI)”.

TAI is ahead of UTC, so you have to add in the leap seconds to UTC to get TAI. 
At 1 jan 1972 00:00:00 UTC this offset was 10s, exactly. To bias the date back 
to 1970, you have to add in 2 * 365 * 86400, to give a value of 63072010 for 1 
jan 1972 00:00:00 UTC. I don’t think you want to subtract it, since that leads 
to an epoch of 31 DEC 1973 00:00:00 due to the leap day in 1972, right?

Warner

> -Brooks
> 
>> 
>> Warner
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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