Interestingly, Google's successor to BigTable -- Spanner -- utilizes GPS clocks ... | Hacker News

Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit

		ihsw on July 29, 2013 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: GPS signals are surprisingly easy to disrupt Interestingly, Google's successor to BigTable -- Spanner -- utilizes GPS clocks and atomic clocks to maintain consistency of their data across globally-distributed data stores. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanner_(database)

sargun on July 30, 2013 | [–]

Also, Google uses accurate atomic clocks in each of their datacenters, so when their GPS connectivity gets cutoff, they can still keep time. Almost everyone does.

jcurbo on July 30, 2013 | [–]

This is not unique to Google, GPS is widely used as a time source for telecommunications and as an input to NTP daemons.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact