[ntp:questions] Re: How many Intel x86 CISC instructions needed to decode NTP time field (ignoring complexities of decoding full packet, re: NTP broadcasting)?

David Woolley david at djwhome.demon.co.uk
Wed Jul 12 06:10:57 UTC 2006


In article <e8vvkd$q67$1 at gnus01.u.washington.edu>, Max Power wrote:

> How many Intel x86 CISC instructions needed to decode NTP time field 
> (ignoring complexities of decoding full packet, re: NTP broadcasting)?

I wouldn't have thought any were required as the time is already in a form
that is generally useful, business contexts (science contexts may need
leap seconds to be preserved).  In fact, many applications have to convert
to something like the NTP format before they do any calculations on dates.

Obviously some work is needed to convert to  typical human time
representations, but without knowing what you want to convert to,
it's difficult to say.  Modern operating systems all come with libraries
that will do this sort of conversion for whole seconds.

I don't understand the broadcasting reference in the subject.




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