| The MSU ERC UltraScope system consists of a distributed computing system, custom PCI cards, GPS receivers, and a re-radiation system. The UltraScope system allows precision timestamping of events in a distributed application on a system where the CPU and PCI clocks are phase-locked. The goal of this research is to expand the UltraScope system, using software routines and minimal hardware modifications, to allow precision timestamping of events on an asynchronous distributed system.; The timestamp process is similar to the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in that it uses a series of timestamps to improve precision. As expected, the precision is less accurate on an asynchronous system than on a synchronous system. Results show that the precision is improved using this sequence of timestamps, and the major error component is due to operating system delays. The errors associated with this timestamping process are characterized using a synchronous system as a baseline. |
