[Tinyos-devel] Time Sync Requirements

[David Gay]

On Dec 19, 2007 2:53 PM, Michael Newman <mnewman at dragonnorth.com> wrote:
> I think a 64
> bit representation can be good enough to handle all of the interesting cases
> including date/time and sub-nanosecond time counting. Note that there are
> two types of time represented by 64 bit numbers, elapsed time and date/time.
> Elapsed times can be added to date/times. Elapsed times might be logged in
> smaller sized datums if they happen to fit. Date/times can not be shrunk
> without adding complexity.

There's a practical problem: msp430-gcc's 64-bit support is reportedly
broken(*). Until someone in the TinyOS community (or outside...)
actually decides to spend the time to fix this, 64-bit types in TinyOS
will be impractical.

David Gay
*: Yes, this is regrettable and all that. But regrets don't fix
compiler bugs or magically make alternative compilers
available/affordable.