[Tinyos Core WG] Unit of time in TOS2

[Joe Polastre]

Martin and Cory came up with the idea of applying the binary prefixes
to negative exponents at the Moteiv offices earlier this week.  Cory
also had a post about it to the 2.0 working group a few days ago.

-Joe

On 10/19/06, Martin Turon <mturon at xbow.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> I agree that TMilbi is the right naming.
>
>  Is Martin L. the first to define negative exponent binary prefixes?  This
> is a cool idea.  It would be good to use an "official" name, or to propose
> the names to NIST/SI or even just on wikipedia.
>
>  Martin
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: tinyos-2.0wg-bounces at Mail.Millennium.Berkeley.EDU on
> behalf of Martin Leopold
>  Sent: Thu 10/19/2006 12:23 PM
>  To: tinyos-2.0wg at Mail.Millennium.Berkeley.EDU
>  Subject: [Tinyos Core WG] Unit of time in TOS2
>
>  Hi All.
>  While reading the Timer TEP (102) a question came up regarding the use
>  units to denote the precision for the timers. The TEP is confusing on
>  the part on what TMilli means - is it 1/1024 s or is it 1/1000 s (as the
>  name suggests). The TEP should be clear and I believe Cory has already
>  fixed that, but I think the question is a little deeper - mixing 1000
>  and 1024 units could in the end lead to misunderstandings.
>
>  I'm not trying to say that the timer unit should be ms, but that it
>  would be elegant if the name reflected what you really get - there is
>  plenty of good reason for using 1/1024 s instead of ms. My feeling is
>  that even if it's put in the FAQ, tutorials and documentation, at some
>  point some poor bloke is going to come along and use the TMilli as ms in
>  a calculation, which is wrong.
>
>  So what are the thoughts on this? Is it enough to be precise in the
>  documentation, or is a name change appropriate?
>
>  I ran into Cory and we talked about what the name should be (if it were
>  to be changed). And resembling the KiB, MiB seems like a good idea, but
>  unfortunately they don't define negative exponents. So in the spirit of
>  the kibi/mebi units milli would become milbi and micro would be micbi
>  and the precision tag names TMilbi/TMicbi.
>   http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
>
>  --
>  Regards Martin Leopold.
>  Dept. of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen
>  http://www.diku.dk/~leopold
>
>
>
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