CPC G06F 1/12 (2013.01) [G06F 1/10 (2013.01); G06F 1/14 (2013.01)] | 20 Claims |
1. A system for providing shared hardware clock access to hosted machine instances forming a distributed computing environment, the system comprising:
a reference timekeeper providing a reference clock synchronized to a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS); and
a plurality of host computing devices, each host computing device hosting one or more machine instances using a first set of computing resources and including isolated timing hardware utilizing a second distinct set of computing resources;
wherein the isolated timing hardware of an individual host computing device is configured to:
set a hardware clock of the isolated timing hardware according to a reference time and a pulse-per-second (PPS) signal obtained from the reference timekeeper via a dedicated time network inaccessible to the one or more machine instances hosted by the individual host computing device;
provide, within each of the one or more machine instances, a virtualized hardware clock, the virtualized hardware clock of each of the one or more machine instances being represented within a respective instance as a locally addressable hardware device;
obtain, from a machine instance of the one or more machine instances, a request to read a current time from the virtualized hardware clock of the machine instance; and
return, in response to the request, a current time of the hardware clock of the isolated timing hardware as a response from the virtualized hardware clock.
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