Electronics Weekly
“TimeFabric, combined with SiTime’s oscillators and clocks, delivers up to 9x more accurate time synchronization than quartz-based solutions,” claimed the company.
Dipping into this a little deeper, SiTime is claiming that a quartz-based OCXO with IEEE 1588 software will glitch >9ns when a nearby cooling fan turns on, while one of its OCXOs will glitch <1ns in the same conditions.
The software consists of two modules:
The first is an IEEE 1588 PTP (precision time protocol) compliant servo and stack – device drivers are included for the company’s network synchronisers.
The second is hold-over extension algorithm that can deliver as much as 24 hours of hold-over if it is combined with the company’s SiT5811 (10 to 60MHz), SiT5812 (60 to 220MHz) or SiT7101 (10 to 60MHz) oscillators.
“It learns the daily drift of the reference clock and, when the reference is lost, actively adjusts the local oscillator to follow the expected drift trajectory,” said SiTime.
The “servo and software stack”, it continued, “is IEEE 1588 PTP standard-compliant at the Class D level – the highest level of performance defined by the standard. TimeFabric goes a step further, delivering sub-nanosecond synchronisation accuracy. This level of precision gives tighter control and greater timing stability over generic IEEE 1588 solutions”.
Other applications include smart network interface cards (‘SmartNICs’), switches, routers and accelerators.
