US 11,855,757 B1
Highly accurate time information in hosted machine instances using dedicated timing network
Julien Ridoux, Seattle, WA (US); Joshua Benjamin Levinson, Seattle, WA (US); Said Bshara, Tira (IL); Erez Izenberg, Tel Aviv-Jaffa (IL); Robert Klein, Kfar Tavor (IL); and Alan Michael Judge, Dublin (IE)
Assigned to Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA (US)
Filed by Amazon Technologies, Inc., Seattle, WA (US)
Filed on Dec. 10, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/643,785.
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 1/10 (2006.01); G06F 1/12 (2006.01); H04J 3/06 (2006.01)
CPC H04J 3/0644 (2013.01) [G06F 1/10 (2013.01); G06F 1/12 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system for synchronizing time among 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);
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;
a general communication network communicatively coupled to the reference timekeeper and the plurality of host computing devices, the general communication network providing for communication among machine instances hosted by the plurality of host computing devices; and
a dedicated time network communicatively coupled to the reference timekeeper and the plurality of host computing devices, the dedicated time network accessible to the isolated timing hardware of each host computing device and inaccessible to machine instances hosted by the plurality of host computing devices;
wherein the isolated timing hardware of an individual host computing device is configured to:
obtain a reference time from the reference timekeeper via the general communication network;
obtain a pulse-per-second (PPS) signal from the reference timekeeper via the dedicated time network;
set a hardware clock of the isolated timing hardware according to the reference time and the PPS signal; and
provide an interface enabling the one or more machine instances hosted by the individual host computing device to, locally within the individual host computing device, request a current time of the hardware clock and receive the current time of the hardware clock.