Comment by SilasX

7 years ago

Oh wow, so the clock is unnecessarily coupled to the other systems?

Tons of events are tied to the real-time clock. For example if the interface code wants to know how fast you're dragging your finger across the screen, it divides the distance between digitizer samples by the elapsed time. Or to know if a "tap" is a "long press", it has to know how long it was. All kinds of stuff depends on that clock.

  • I remember the double-click (which is time-dependent) still working on my Mac Plus when the clock was stuck at midnight. It also didn't crash the OS and make the computer turn off.

clock as in "processor ticks", not clock as in "my watch". It's necessarily coupled, cause a processor can't function without it.

  • No it is the watch, AKA the RTC

    • From the article:

      > Without a clock, the system stands still. The CPU flat out doesn’t work. The clock is literally the heartbeat of a modern device.

      Plenty of processors run without an RTC, but they all need a stable clock source (some do generate it internally, but they still need it)

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