US 12,111,681 B2
Network adapter providing isolated self-contained time services
Itai Levy, Haifa (IL); Dotan David Levi, Kiryat Motzkin (IL); Nir Nitzani, Tel Aviv (IL); Natan Manevich, Ramat Hasharon (IL); Alex Vaynman, Modiin (IL); and Ariel Almog, Kohav Yair (IL)
Assigned to MELLANOX TECHNOLOGIES, LTD., Yokneam (IL)
Filed by MELLANOX TECHNOLOGIES, LTD., Yokneam (IL)
Filed on May 6, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/313,026.
Prior Publication US 2022/0357763 A1, Nov. 10, 2022
Int. Cl. G06F 1/12 (2006.01); G06F 13/20 (2006.01); H04L 7/00 (2006.01)
CPC G06F 1/12 (2013.01) [G06F 13/20 (2013.01); H04L 7/0012 (2013.01)] 21 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. An apparatus, comprising:
a hardware clock fitted in a network adapter; and
circuitry, which is contained within the network adapter and is to:
communicate with a host over a peripheral bus; receive, from a communication network, one or more time-protocol packets of a time-synchronization protocol, the time-protocol packets conveying a network time used for synchronizing network devices in the communication network;
run, within the network adapter, a software stack of the time-synchronization protocol, wherein running the software stack includes aligning the hardware clock to the network time conveyed in the time-protocol packets; and
make the network time available over the peripheral bus to one or more time-service consumers running in the host.