A Practical Perspective

Let's look into the practical perspective of clocks and time in distributed systems.

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The clocks used in real systems are what we usually call physical clocks.

Physical clock

A physical clockC. Dyreson, “Physical Clock,” Encyclopedia of Database Systems, 2009. is a physical process coupled with a method of measuring that process to record the passage of time.

Most physical clocks are based on cyclic processes. Below are some examples of such devices:

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