Why is this PCIe Card RADIOACTIVE?

[@dennydravis8758]

Slight correction: the rubidium clock has to be synced to GPS not because of drift, but due to special relativity. At the nanosecond resolution, traveling in an airliner at high altitude could theoretically cause the accuracy to drift.

[@ok-sl4we]

This comment will be here forever...

[@andrewgoss1682]

As in, it's time traveling?

[@suncat530]

@@andrewgoss1682 yup

[@Z0MBUSTER]

bs

[@W1zardRyan]

Real?

[@Spirit532]

Just to clarify: The clock doesn't use rubidium's (minuscule and totally safe) radioactivity. It uses hyperfine transitions of the Rb atoms to stabilize an oscillator(clock).

[@reuseful2839]

So it's not really radioactive? Because that was weirdly unaddressed in the video

[@rustile306]

@@reuseful2839 Yeah, I mean I don't really mind the clickbaiting with RADIOACTIVE in the title since it technically is I guess, but they should have at least clarified.

[@chedatomasz]

@@reuseful2839 it is, but the radioactivity is not used, is is just a side effect of the element chosen as the clock's heart

[@SandwichDoctorZ]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but technically heat from fire is a form of radiation too. Weirdly enough, I guess even radioactive material can be safe in moderation lol

[@Codingale]

Rubidium is also the stuff in your catalytic converter, along with other valuable metals

[@JeffGeerling]

It's working on a Raspberry Pi! Hope to have a video about it soon. No problems cooling the itty bitty NIC on the Pi Compute Module 4 ;)

[@hnramba]

imagine jeff collaborating with Anthony. The crossover we didn’t know we needed.

[@YouNameItGaming]

@Jeff Geerling I was just thinking of you when I mentioned a pi array in my main thread comment! You have a great channel by the way, you really make me want to pick up a pi 4, and maybe do more with my current 3b lol

[@lamondhaughton1598]

So I am guessing you will be able to drastically increase your Pies clusters efficiency. Wonder if it will make supercomputer and parallel computing and application more accurate speeding up everything. I am waiting on the video.

[@ventusprime]

Hy - Jeff its pcie so probably need only a driver but if I see the card gives out sinc clock signal so we can use that on gpio

[@ventusprime]

but to more precise and we need speed ,Assembly lang to keep the program runin cycle to minimum.

[@braddl9442]

I love this type of content. Sometimes you really need to see what tech is beyond video production and gaming or seeing Linus tear his house apart.

[@Sacca989]

I'm here for the Linus's home demolition.

[@lillywho]

_but it no make me pc go brrrrrr_

[@robertbox5399]

Is there a gaming vlog totally free of RGB LEDs? I'd be in.

[@linuxstreamer8910]

@penguins buzz off bot

[@WILLYB3ST]

CHECK OUT GUYS NEW VIDEO UPLOADED MRBEAST 😀😘

[@LawrenceJohnYoung]

The fact that this was made open source is amazing, world changing stuff.

[@leonardsalt]

Yeah man, imagine framework laptop comes up with an atomic module for a laptop

[@MarcusfotosDe]

i agree this ist some Volvo Seatbelt level move!

[@longpham-sj5sv]

I don't think so. The design uses many exotic parts and is overly expensive. Generally it is called GPS Disciplined Oscillator (GPSDO), it has been implemented so many time that some people call their design "Yet another GPSDO".

[@Laevatei1nn]

ahmad big homie

[@Ladybug-Raine]

It's more open hardware than open source in its current state.

[@Ilkanar]

"we just whacked 20ms on everything" OKAY this is a good reminder that whole world is DIY and yolo in solutions that just work

[@SoulTouchMusic93]

am trucker. basically all commercial vehicles are just adult lego.

[@felipegutierrez2193]

@@SoulTouchMusic93 As a kid who plays, builds and works with sh!t like 3D printers, they are all just the most YOLO solutions ever. From code to hardware. These things are built from LED power supplies and the motors of old scanners. And to compensate for inaccuracy to print you will just plug in an "offset" values, from distance, to motor steps, to temperature. And they fail... even the best engineered hardware, code has had mindfucks where it does not know how to manage a high temp of a failing relay that just clicked open and just lets it rip (3D printer of a friend caught on fired thanks to the computer trying to click an unresponsive relay off instead of going to kill the power source). I think if it's programmed by humans, it has YOLO solutions all over it, that one day or another, will be fixed, or a catastrophe depending on what we are talking about.

[@CompletelyNormal]

Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution that works.

[@Gilberto90]

This is why the Space shuttle had 4 flight control computers designed in the '60s synced up for redundancy and an additional independent fifth backup computer with software _written independently_ , just in case. The computers from the 60s were good enough and 'just worked' (a valuable attribute for spaceflight) but in case there was a hidden glitch in the software knocking out the main computers the backup would be very unlikely to have the same glitch.

[@p24p14]

Upcoming Fallout games are gonna be interesting with real nuclear parts in your pc!

[@mihailgorgieski8193]

Woah this is bot central

[@PiastTorun]

I don't think any future fallout games will be any good...

[@Bro_from_bama]

Extra meta

[@Cwiss42069]

With an EVGA 3090...😂

[@virtusetglorie]

@@PiastTorun Sadly, I agree. You beat me to saying it.

[@Max_Mustermann]

It is actually really quite impressive that they managed to miniaturize atomic clocks to such a degree.

[@frecio231]

When I was a kid I had this magazine that had a picture of an atomic clock, it was huge (I think bigger than my table) and now fits in my palm, just amazing

[@Test-bi5rg]

@@frecio231 The National Air and Space Museum has a collection of atomic clock, from a huge metal chuck (50 years ago) to the size of an oscilloscope. Now it becomes even smaller while maintaining the ultra precision. Tech truly advances.

[@Jake1702]

The devs must've played a lot of Fallout.

[@Spirit532]

You can get them about 1/2 of the size of that one too, for around $300-600. Chip-scale atomic clock, CSAC, from Microchip.

[@Spirit532]

@@Test-bi5rg To be fair, those are still used. You're referring to cesium clocks, and they *are* more precise than these embedded Rb standards. They also have a finite lifetime, since they use a "spray" of Cs from one side of a tube to the other.

[@hedgeearthridge6807]

Fun fact: the Atomic Clocks in GPS satellites are set to run very slightly faster(?) than the clocks on Earth. Because of Relativity (Gravity and Velocity) causing time to drift apart. If they didn't do that, GPS would lose several kilometers of accuracy every week!

[@maxhouseman3129]

That's true! At work I use rubidium clocks or our big GPS antenna on the roof to get the most precise 10 MHz pulse for my applications.

[@vidyajamesu]

@The Program Isn't it fucking wild that "I have to account for the distortion of the fabric of space-time caused by black holes" is a thing you can say about your work and be 100% honest about it? Literally a Star Trek engineer at this point

[@diablo.the.cheater]

@@vidyajamesu No, no "I have to account for the distortion of the fabric of space-time caused by black holes" it is "I have to account for the distortion of the fabric of space-time caused by Earth" Gravity is a distorsion of space AND time, that includes Earth's gravity, the reason the gps have to adjust is Earth gravity mostly, since gravity is slightly different at surface and at orbit, time ticks slightly differently, it is very minuscule but in stuff like gps that need that level of preccision that slight difference adds up and is enough to mess with them.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

And the satellites are also yeeting around earth which causes them to experience time slower. Are the signals from GPS sattelites more precise than those from ground based atomic clocks? Cause there is one less than 340km from here that transmits per radio and is also accesible per NTP

[@liudas000]

I dont think so, because if satellites would run at least slightly faster - you would lose GPS lock at higher altitudes. Time drifting at long distances is key feature to lock your location, and once its done - your device knows how far you are from satellites and can calculate exactly what time is on them.

[@lol_iyoutube]

When Linus watercools this thing, it will require a stack and some graphite rods

[@NaN.404]

ow man not again

[@nothing-mm8ui]

Nuclear reactor cooling

[@fullyverified7491]

Lmao

[@thechanglongwang]

we do a little trolling

[@noodled6145]

Not great, not terrible.

[@cyberspectre8675]

"At $1,600, most gamers would buy a 3090 instead" 😂 keep giving them false hope, Linus

[@kkona3868]

more like a scalped 3080 at those prices lol. I havent checkin this month but imsure 3090s are still 2k+

[@LoyalSol]

I got one for that price. Just had to camp microcenter like crazy.

[@kkona3868]

@@LoyalSol damn thats awesome! did you have to lineup early outside each day to get a chance for one? I had to go with the prebuild route and got a 3080 and a i9 11900k for 3k including shipping and taxes!

[@LoyalSol]

@@kkona3868 The Microcenter near me wouldn't announce when they got their shipment so they basically would just quietly drop it and you had to hope you were there when they did. They at least had a 1 card per person per month policy and you needed to show ID to buy. So it stopped people from just loading up their carts so you had a decent window to show up and hope to find a card. I basically would stop in every day for over 3 weeks at random times to look for drops. Some days multiple times a day, but managed to show up right as they got a shipment in. I was originally just targeting a 3080 or 3070, but when I saw they had the 3090 I jumped on it. I actually can use the card's full potential with my work.

[@sam11182]

You can get a 3090 for $1.600? Sign me up! Haha I kid. I would love a 2070 or 3070. I still really enjoy my 970. Seventy is great since it is over the top but only barely.

[@mrtoastyman07]

I would like to see this implemented at LTT - even if the use cases are marginal at best, I think getting tech like this more exposure is super awesome.

[@lekkerspellenspelen2903]

Hehehe exposure

[@CrystEarthPaw]

LTT has always been informative and funny, but this is actually legit one of the coolest video's I've watched in a while, I always knew about atomic clocks but the fact that they can be used in such World changing ways is mindblowing. I can't wait to see what this will bring in the future.

[@ROVD47]

@@RandomUser2401 Sarcasm🤦‍♂️

[@alexandermaxx]

@@RandomUser2401 questions such as? :)

[@AlamoOriginal]

@@RandomUser2401 ok why don't you tell us what is lacking in the video? i'm sure the rest of it is up to viewers to research more, so again what is it?

[@nicolasnogueira2862]

I agree 100%

[@isilder]

@@AlamoOriginal its up to linus to prove its so beneficial. Try again april 1

[@rhekman]

Linus: Gets nanosecond accurate timing. Also Linus: We're still late for the WAN Show.

[@ok-sl4we]

ok...

[@jmelchiori85]

They also only demonstrated microsecond accurate timing...

[@danieljensen2626]

@@jmelchiori85 They kinda skimmed past it, but it looked like their two computers were synched to at least 10-100 ns, with a fixed microsecond level offset from true GPS time.

[@ItsNotNick]

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in my entire life, this has me genuinely stoked for the future, just to see whatever practical implementations people come up with for this tech.

[@Intelwinsbigly]

Open her up, get the rad stuff, make the glowy paint.

[@aldiprayogi766]

That solution to add 20ms to every request seems like a very TODO commented code lol

[@undead890]

Honestly, having worked in programming in some way or another for over 10 years, this seems exactly like the kind of half-assed patch that data centers would use.

[@nukularpictures]

Nah. It is just everything else could really make stuff harder to debug and could cause crazy bugs. Sometimes the easy solutions are the best. I mean the people working there are not stupid and if they can get a factor 100 improvement just by having more accurate timestamps I am quite sure they tried a lot of alternatives before.

[@freyamiles3718]

I remember it was a solution used to make sure projectiles on scratch actually did damage before dissapearing

[@BattousaiHBr]

hey, if it works at all...

[@Kandralla]

@@undead890 go down a layer and you'll find that this is the type of "half assed solution" everything runs on. A significant amount of raw capacity (be it bits, cycles, whatever) is spent in the process of keeping track of the ones that do actual stuff. You just don't see it because it's handled at a level below where you're working. You ask the OS for a file and you get the bits that make up the file completely oblivious to the 6 extra ones added by the hard drive for every 8 useful bits just to keep track of timing.

[@rayb3rt]

The clock needs gps to establish an initial timestamp with subsecond accuracy which is why gps is needed. The rubidium just provides significantly slow drift and gives holdover stability when there's loss of gps. Cheaper OXCOs can be used if a gps input is always available.

[@KavorkaDesigns]

"Cesium Atomic Clock" ;)

[@pa4tim]

I use one, you can buy them cheap ( ex mobile phone repeater) Mine was 70 euros, only had to make a psu and added a display for 10 euro. I use it as a time source for my measurement gear. (like counters, network and spectrum analysers)

[@ChlorideCull]

If you always have GPS input and just want accurate time, ntpd on a Raspberry Pi with a GPS hat can get an offset of around 10 microseconds after running about an hour.

[@TrimeshSZ]

@@KavorkaDesigns It's a bit confusing though - normally when you talk about a cesium clock people will think of a cesium beam device like the HP5071 - this is a bit different, it operates on the same principle as a rubidium clock, just using cesium. The performance is still excellent, just inferior to a cesium beam - but it makes up for that by far lower power consumption and physical size.

[@porklaser]

It's a pretty reasonable price for a new frequency standard, receiver, etc all packaged on to a card as a ready-to-go solution. (You can see the standard is a off the shelf module it's just sitting there on the card) Prices have come down a lot! These things used to cost 10x the price not that long ago. Yeah you can DIY it for much cheaper with a salvaged standard off ebay but for new this isn't bad.

[@monty12865]

this made me very happy as a developer, like the techs cool but knowing that teams of the smartest people on the planets best solution was "just add 20ms" made me feel great

[@fitybux4664]

It was annoying to say there was a problem like that without even mentioning what software he's talking about. NoSQL DB? Some RDBMS? Replication conflicts? 😆 Nobody knows!

[@Ceelvain]

The part you got wrong is "smartest people on the planets". If you've got a dev job you know how it works. You have a finite amount of time and need to push some code even if it's not perfect.

[@cmaxz817]

​@Ayaan K lots of them, mostly are just bandaids solution.

[@cmaxz817]

​@@fitybux4664 well, those that needs accuracy. Like basically any TCP connection that requires time precision like FPS games, massive data distribution, military equipments, etc.

[@yongukjung5390]

Jokes aside, this really is pretty cool. I feel like motherboards in the future will just ship with this feature built in

[@FluePeak]

give this about a year or 2 and this will me implimented in m.2/ssd or even a new one

[@stranger7968]

Doubt it as radioactive materials is a giant pita to handle. you have to label your shipment that it contains radioactive materials. certifications ? then it's gonna end up in the landfill eventually. this is just a bad bad bad idea.

[@yumri4]

The feature is the supporting chip for the feature is not.

[@jasontechlord]

Motherboards, Phones! This is what is going to push communication standards well past 6G.

[@stranger7968]

@@yumri4 Oh no I meant specifically having it be part of the motherboard. As a separate module it could probably work.

[@CanicusVoid]

This was a lot cooler than i was expecting. I wasn't aware how much impact more accurate clocks could have

[@TheNefastor]

Accurate time has been important since before electricity. Especially to sailors. Look it up. They are the reason we have had such complex timepieces for centuries.

[@MrRom92DAW]

People underestimate the power of accurately clocked hardware. It’s amazing how cheaply stuff was put together back in the day… take any two original SNES consoles. They won’t even run at the same speed.

[@Powerman293]

Yeah and the speed of games was tied to cpu frequency back then. Meaning performance was slightly variable machine to machine lol. But not in a silicon lottery overclocking way.

[@FiRe-mb5zc]

You can still use a RC or 555 still today and live with like 20-30% you can still go for it. or you can use an rv-1805-ce or sth alike and go with less. It depends on what you want to achieve or how much bugdet you have

[@BlokeOnAMotorbike]

that would have massive implications for speedrunners where world records are claimed on timing differences of just one millisecond.

[@MrRom92DAW]

@@BlokeOnAMotorbike it probably *should* have implications for speedrunners. These consoles weren’t even clocked stably when they were new, let alone 30 years later. However that is the natural behavior of “original hardware” so I could understand that just being an accepted part of the deal when it comes to official speedrunning. Not all consoles are exactly identical, even when it comes to newer consoles.

[@NarcoSarco]

Working as a sysadmin, i can very much relate to the "lmao just add 20ms" solution.

[@siccoblue2112]

as a sysadmin, and this is probably an extremely stupid question, but why cant you create a way to handle packets coming from the "future"? this is the one part of the video i didnt understand the issue, but to everyone in the know it seems like an inside joke. is it purely a matter of not being able to perdict when they come? if so why does it really matter if they just need to process those packets if they are in the future in relation to the time received

[@BringBackTBC]

@@siccoblue2112 my slight understanding is if you use wireshark/software to sniff packet then a script to slightly edit in a perfect way you could alter data transmission real time and a tiny tiny amount off processing time is used making it just seem like a slow transfer but could be a change, so you could replicate real time unencrypted traffic. but i may be WAY off.

[@tstoker14]

This is really neat! I am a touring audio engineer and we kind of deal with the same thing with our systems and syncing digital audio between multiple stations and even the PA systems. We use Word Clocks that use Atomic clocks similar to these cards. Having multiple stations that are processing the same source in real time need an external clock source to reference to rather than referencing back to there own processed internal clock source. Trying to have these stations process and reference this internally rather than syncing from a external word clock can create phase relation issues and even complete audio dropouts and very bad noises from a digital source. Latency is everything in the world of live audio.

[@testthisfordecficiencies]

Why? An atomic word ckock is just not needed. Antelope is really the only one and I have never seen anyone use it. Any digital audio system i have seen generally uses a master clock such as a consoles internal clock or Dante card for example.

[@tstoker14]

@@testthisfordecficiencies it is absolutely needed for the application I am using it for. Yes, all digital consoles have their own internal clock source, and yes you can clock from other external protocols like Dante and even have those protocols clock from your consoles internal clock. I use external word clocks because I am dealing with systems that have multiple consoles, playback sources, and outputs all over AVB and AES that needs to see the same clock source. Especially with dealing with multiple protocols like Dante, Madi, AVB, etc. Many audio engineers use external clocks in the concert touring world because of similar challenges like this. I actually use antelope word clocks like the ocx or isochrone trinity because of how many 75ohm bnc outputs they have. It all depends on the application and budget.

[@joshuadelaughter]

Linus: This PCIe card is radioactive! Also Linus: **tosses it on the counter**

[@atisbasak]

Actually the card is not radioactive. Rubidium is not radioactive

[@joshuadelaughter]

@@atisbasak Yeah, I know. Just thought it was kinda funny.

[@mithshude]

@@atisbasak "Natural rubidium is radioactive, with specific activity of about 670 Bq/g, enough to significantly expose a photographic film in 110 days"

[@mennoduk]

Please implement this. This can only give great results: a faster network and/ or a very entertaining series. And it isn't as expensive as a gold controller 😉

[@navb0tactual]

*Yvonne didn't like that*

[@NilakshMalpotra]

@@navb0tactual I think Yvonne is still convinced he'll sell it someday. Living in denial I think :D

[@xxcr4ckzzxx840]

+1 I want to see that! Much more Interesting than a Gold Controller.

[@navb0tactual]

@@NilakshMalpotra scars of the past for her Future memories for Linus

[@goldcd]

But I also liked the gold controller. The latest incremental release of a gaming laptop.. I can give that a miss.

[@willg955]

5:11 "Did you just say Alex is inbred?" "WHAT" I died.

[@Artek385]

Ah yes, it's all coming together xD

[@matthewday7565]

I was expecting an Isotope driven random number generator, for when you want things to be the opposite of precise

[@marc-andreservant201]

You don't need any radioactive substances for that, you can use thermal noise within the semiconductor die itself (as is done with Intel CPUs and RDRAND instruction). Adding radioactive isotopes under the heat spreader would be cheap to do but massively expensive in terms of regulatory compliance.

[@SobaKick]

Linus: Why is this pcie card radioactive Also Linus: holds it next to his head.

[@hoovyzepoot]

He could probably get a higher dose of radiation from eating a potato than holding it next to his head

[@tonisara2950]

@Anna I didnt know that 😨

[@jackielinde7568]

If he's lucky, it's either Alpha particles (blocked by the skin) or Gama waves (which are so energetic, they'll just go straight through him without hitting much.) It's those pesky Beta particles you have to worry about. (Physics for the WIN! Baby!)

[@SobaKick]

@@hoovyzepoot I know

[@PeterNjeim]

@Anna I don't normally click on those spam videos, but wow that was actually a very emotional one, glad I watched it

[@blech71]

This technology has huge implications and potential benefits to telemetry from multiple sources that are all time sync’d. Amazing. We’ve been looking for this for quite some time…. No pun intended.

[@albyboy4278]

Facebook promotion telemetry atomic clock "FPTAC" the next internet protocol of the future for the Facebook collection data 😁

[@NeroStrike]

Ahmad is a generous genius and I support his efforts. Bonus that Linus and co. think his stuff is cool too ;)

[@paranoidrodent]

Great piece! I love this sort of content that goes into the nuts and bolts of technology, especially new technologies that can seem minor or obscure at first glance. I doubt most viewers would have known that highly accurate and precise clocks have so many applications and ripple effects.

[@zachcrawford5]

When you get this accurate with time keeping you are going to have to start compensating for the effects of time dilation. Things like how far are your server racks from the center of the earth because time will run (generally) run slightly slower at sea level than they will at high elevations since gravity is slightly stronger at sea level. What is the earth's crust under your server made of (a cubic kilometer of granite will slow time more than a cubic kilometer of limestone because it is denser). What latitude is your server at? Since at the equator you are moving faster than if you are near the poles and the passage of time will be different. I'm sure that is why this tech still syncs with one universal clock as a bit of a cheat but it's just kind of amazing that out consumer tech (I use the term "consumer" a bit loosely here) has become so fine tuned and sensitive that it can actually be significantly affected by the ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself.

[@buggerlugz6753]

Hell, just like nipping to the tidal wave planet in Interstallar then..... ;)

[@Matthewbidk]

r/iamverysmart

[@siccoblue2112]

at that point arent you getting into differences significantly tighter than what the cards can even manage? like the entire reason these extreme levels of timekeeping exist in the first place, the surface of which these cards dont really even scratch?

[@lordruprecht4696]

Absolut right, and since this is impossible GPS Time gets used. GPS has to compensate for that stuff, because of the speed the satellites have. I work in the car industry and we also use GPS Time to solve a lot of synchronisation issues between the different Electric Control Units with GPS Time. Also a nice reminder how important Space is nowadays.

[@blinded6502]

@@Matthewbidk r/ihavereddit

[@engonzal]

This was awesome, I love deep dives about timings like this! I setup a GPS Raspberry Pi Timeserver a while back and it was a really fun project.

[@progamer1125]

i like when linus said: "so that facebook can efficiently sell your data"

[@iqcuber5125]

lmfao XD

[@Graphics_Card]

Finally a pcie card for me to play music inside my pc! Thank you *radioactive pcie card!*

[@Draglox]

Lmao

[@zerghydralisk1837]

Probobly its good music card to play cheeki breeki in the zone

[@BattousaiHBr]

akhsually ☝️🤓decay is random so any music produced by it would be random as well.

[@ramennoodles2391]

Linus: “Alex is inbred” Alex and literally everyone watching this: WTF?

[@chill23581]

Agreed

[@ishimarumasaki1998]

@@2Champions why?

[@TheMrKeksLp]

@@2Champions Oh no someone call the Twitter police

[@DMSparky]

If one of my friends or coworkers jokingly called me an inbred I would probably just laugh. That’s a pretty funny roast IMO…

[@ishimarumasaki1998]

@@2Champions im asking you a question

[@SpXLab]

The Impact of this accurate Time cannot be overestimated, it's really beautiful. Now I just need a project to use it :)

[@TheCatpirate]

2021: Radioactive PCIe card 2033: Nuclear reactor PCIe card

[@rynobehnke8289]

A finally can a PC power it self. just 12 more years

[@rohesilmnelohe]

Now imagine a Gigabyte produced Nuclear Reactor PCI-e card I'm pretty sure it would take lessons from their PSU's and go full Chernobyl... *shudders*

[@Cyberguy42]

I feel like they must have had a bad ntp configuration for that baseline example... I've used it (well, chrony) to synchronize computers for robotics work, and the time difference between them has never been close to that large. I believe you can also designate one local machine to serve as a time server for the rest of the network, then you should be able to synchronize to roughly within local lan latency. Obviously the atomic clock hardware will give much better results, I'm just saying that you can get much better than shown without it.

[@txe1nd]

Wait huh

[@superq]

@@txe1nd The video is likely rigged to show poor NTP performance. Systems on a local network like this should be able to have sub-millisecond sync with normal off-the-shelf NTP.

[@marshmallok]

Linus:talks about how low latency is important Me with my 400 ping:

[@qqnqqpart]

What he essentially said is 400 ping won't matter any more if your computer has this and is synced, because the server receiving your clicks will know who clicked first hence apply things accurately I see a use case in remote competitions, but hopefully more people get to benefit

[@marshmallok]

@@qqnqqpart tech

[@notlekrut]

@@qqnqqpart Wouldn't really fix the latency issue in the real world. Let's say one user has 20ms latency between his PC and the game server, and another has 200ms. Let's say the 200ms shoots first, in real-time of course. The server isn't going to wait for the possibility of the slower user having shot first. Multiple ticks have already occurred at the server side at that point and the game wouldn't turn back time to give the 200ms user the winning shot. So you can't really slow down logic to fix that issue. That particular issue isn't accurate timestamps, it's latency between PC and server, atomic clocks don't fix latency. Atomic clocks just make sure that requests are accurately timed, but if the request still takes too long to reach the server, it really might be too late too process. And in this case, if the server has already processed the shoot for the 20ms user, even if he shot later(in atomic time) the server will just give him the win and won't wait, for example, 100ms for the other requests. Even a game with 15 updates for second server side, multiple updates could have occurred without the shoot from the 200ms arriving at the server. Obviously, even both users have good latency, it can indeed make that decision more accurate, but it won't always be the case.

[@gotworc]

you can't even stay in a game with 400 ping or do anything lmao. you'll just get kicked out or nothing will load

[@DrFu79]

FUN FACT: Gaming with a Mars colony will have a minimum Ping of 2 475 720 ms, or over 41 minutes.

[@WyFoster]

Impressive, I bet we'll hear more about this in the years to come. Excited to see it's applications for science, detecting gravitational waves!

[@elmustachio3683]

This was a fantastic video. I really like videos like this that describe the limitations of technology and how technological developments reduce the limitations to drive capability improvements. Keep it up!

[@licson0729]

The atomic clock I work with in a telco central office (used for synchronize legacy SDH networks which is TDM) is way larger lol. The thing takes up about 6U of rack space. Meanwhile what Linus shows is the same thing but inside a PCIe card...

[@CoalitionGaming]

Gonna call this the "middle out" card if it ends up getting used for stream encoding quality :)

[@BrianMartin2007]

I see what you did there

[@Brittway]

Well, Just need Elgato to start making timing cards now or integrating it in a high end capture card.

[@CoalitionGaming]

@Tyler Schultz *woosh*

[@TomStorey96]

Correction regarding sub sea "repeaters": they are "simply" optical amplifiers. There is no active participation in the so called "data plane" on the sea floor (and repeater is a kind of legacy term that hangs around in telecomms.) In doing so it enables any pair of fiber in the cable to carry any combination of wavelengths, and each wavelength can then carry any type of data stream (Ethernet, SONET/SDH, etc at a variety of different speeds), with only the on-shore equipment needing to be changed. It would be super impractical to have to haul up a cable repeater by repeater to install upgrades when you want to switch from 40G to 100G Ethernet per wavelength for example. So they can't slow down and affect traffic. An amplifier can fail, for sure, but this can be determined through existing telemetry streams and doesn't require any new fancy timing mechanisms. (My background: about 20 years as a network engineer covering IP, microwave and optical networks)

[@lyfandeth]

Another correction: The card probably uses the GPS because there are "leap seconds" every year, and differences between terrestial and astronomical time. Depending on which time standard you are keeping, these small differences can be critical.

[@TheCatpirate]

Linus, you know what the people want: *Watercool it*

[@MaxLivesInCanada]

holy shit yes plz

[@AkaLxndon1]

when it gets really cold in my room i’ll just lower the water level to heat it up a bit

[@tomkocur]

this stuff is actually heated up for a very good reason - keeping the temperature of the clock source stable.

[@donaldbestkorea2248]

put a sniper scope on it

[@TheCatpirate]

@@setukas You're right, RGB IT

[@connorvine6399]

Ya know. Living 30 minutes away from LIGO and hearing you mention it so many times in this video made me really happy. I have like 5 friends that work at the LIGO station. The things they're doing there is awesome.

[@HipyoTech]

6:31 Shots fired at my bowels :(

[@thinthle]

Hey the keyboard assembling guy i watch *waves*

[@masterbspace]

More like shots fired OUT of your bowels

[@dingdongbells3314]

Random overthinking question: On this ridiculous scale, does gravitational waves from colliding black holes in other galaxies shift the timing?

[@naamadossantossilva4736]

Yes,or else it would be useless as a telescope.

[@LinusTechTips]

Not so much shifting the timing as changing the scale of literally everything a very small amount. Gravitational waves change the size of everything, so if a gravitational wave makes the world a bit smaller it would take less time for light to travel across the ocean. -Alex

[@kkona3868]

woah they responded :O

[@varunrmallya5369]

@@LinusTechTips yeah, as the speed of light dosent change in any reference frames(in vaccum ). even if you make everything smaller, light will travel at 299792458m/s only.

[@ruukinen]

@@varunrmallya5369 Light in fact does slow down when not in a vacuum. That's how you get a prism dividing the light into a rainbow.

[@etnevel.naitzsirk]

The part about the price was a _"Hello darkness, my old friend..."_ moment.

[@dumpsterdawg]

Linus: "System A will think it got a message from the future" Not saying that time travel is possible but next week has been exhausting.

[@ok-sl4we]

ok...

[@p24p14]

It's sad that this technology is so advanced and so incredible and very real and yet we still have people who think we didn't land on the moon

[@tollevkvendbo]

The cultural centre of earth also contains the highest concentration of idiots, conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers/maskers. World is full of morons

[@zMoaz]

If you ever feel dumb, remember flat earthers exist

[@Stiegelzeine]

@@zMoaz no if someone is dumb he should rather know there’s a country full of dumb people called the United States of America so if he goes there he will be atleast as smart as the average person

[@soulofshukaku]

I would LOVE to see you guys do a "setting up our atomic clocks" video. It'd be cool.

[@thomasgardner838]

I'm currently working towards becoming a software engineer in my spare time, and stuff like this genuinely gets me to audibly exclaim 'fuck this is cool'. It makes me want to work harder and inspires me. Cheers LTT.

[@TheSonnyGo]

When he brought out the Keysight, I was expecting an Electroboom cameo.

[@kerverse]

LOL

[@maskedredstonerproz]

same

[@Mengmoshu]

I would absolutely love to watch a video about implementing this on the LTT office network.

[@delvenhamric1200]

A lot of audio interfaces have a word clock, to keep all of your recorded audio in sync! It might be interesting to figure out how to use it. Great topic though!

[@MikkoRantalainen]

The sync frequency to have sample accurate sync is only around 40 kHz so using that to syncronize clocks would get you to 25 µs accuracy. That's better than default NTP implementation but may not be accurate enough compared to what you can do with custom hardware.

[@ghost-jesus]

​@@MikkoRantalainen 44 KHz is standard on crappy realtek chips, anything decent runs 96 KHz to minimize distortion during post-processing, allow for better noise cancellation since you can analyze things outside human hearing range to detect unwanted noises more accurately and it allows you to account for bone conduction.

[@justinvzu01]

As an Electrical Engineering student this is absolutely awesome to me. Timing is so damn important, and the capability of modern computers can increase by so much using these devices.

[@AwesomeSauce7176]

This episode was awesome, I like learning new things about computers and it's cool to see some new tech I wasn't already aware of after so many years of watching LTT

[@RealLifeTech187]

I love these dives into the new frontiers of tech. Keep it up because it inspires so many people.

[@devinmacy186]

I’m a computer engineering student wanting to go to graduate school, the only problem is I don’t know what I want to do research on and this video definitely opened my eyes to the possibilities of this

[@Those2menoverthere]

Good luck! 👍

[@polygonGMD]

bro is just causally holding a radioactive gpu and isn't even slightly concerned.

[@tyrannicpuppy]

Why do I get the feeling Alex has wanted to throw that punch on camera ever since those were finalized?

[@borislovothered8124]

because he did

[@vitormhenrique]

I would like to see how the clock was generated ok each computer to be measured on the oscilloscope. And the more technical behind how to sync the computers enabling the protocol…

[@andreilukovenko8350]

Many NICs a capable of 1PPS signal output, what Linus does there - is comparing those two outputs across two NICs

[@chedatomasz]

Also, there is a post from facebook open source about this. They released all the info and want to make it a standard

[@TristanVash38]

Editing was on point. I like your editor.

[@ElliotShayle]

Linus (Tech Tips), this is THE COOLEST hardware you've featured in ages! And that's coming from a biologist, not even a physicist/engineer. You've gotta add it to your network, I would watch the hell out of that!

[@achtsekundenfurz7876]

> this is THE COOLEST hardware you've featured in ages! 100% agree, It was about time, too. * _synchronized chuckle_ *

[@codytran1719]

@@achtsekundenfurz7876 tf I feel like u dm some1 right in front of u u weirdo

[@jantube358]

This is the kind of content I want from LTT! Now I really learned something new!

[@ryanschenk2946]

I was glad to see Ahmad in the video. His work is really important for the future of the internet and scientific discovery and he seems like a super good guy, too!

[@MadPutz]

This may enable far larger multiplayer battles than what is currently possible. MMORPGs will actually be massive, and without the lag! It doesn’t necessarily have to be in everyone’s PC, it speeding up the servers in the data center will be a huge upgrade in itself.

[@BlokeOnAMotorbike]

CCP do the opposite during large battles in EVE Online. They call it time dilation, or TiDi, where in order to maintain the stability of a server node instead of offloading packets to another node (potentially introducing asynchronous outputs to *every client*), they simply slow the node down. Before the introduction of this function, large battles were difficult to impossible to implement as the nodes had a tendency to crash hard under heavy load as they'd physically overheat. With the slowdown and input queuing the node stays stable notwithstanding the input delay that means a twenty minute battle involving eight and a half thousand individual meatsack players could last longer than 14 hours.

[@ianjohnson182]

I've never been more excited about a clock before.

[@nicolasnogueira2862]

I like those kind of videos, coll tech things that are fun to watch and learn about. Thanks LTT team, keep the awesome work!

[@EggsTeaSea]

this is actually one of the few new tech innovations that im excited for.

[@jasontechlord]

As someone who was in the metrology field, this has me very excited!

[@Clavichordist]

This is cool stuff! Back in the early 1990s, I worked for a life insurance company that had a time server. This '486 PC running Novell Netware, ran a proprietary program that issued time-stamps to all the clients on the network to ensure that the transactions were time stamped accordingly. The resolution was down to a tenth of a second. Imagine the work of this full-size '486 PC being done on a single PCI board now.

[@Pxrpose]

The people of Chernobyl have this built-in already

[@FahadFSA]

omg so funny

[@waldineytorres8578]

Now this is actual technological progress. Haven't seen one of those in years besides gimmicks, personally. Glad to witness this event.

[@UltraBadass]

Props to the LTT team, Facebook put out an article about pcie cars with atomic clocks only a few days ago and heres a video about it already

[@Mitt27]

Would love to see a video on AC1 encoding and what the future could be

[@harshkoranne9163]

This should've been a part of my computer engineering syllabus.

[@axelrajr]

i worked with a passive satellite receiver in the Navy that had a time card the size of an ITX motherboard and had an accuracy of 1 second every 1000 years. it was 90s technology and was set by hand. this is the size of a sound blaster and is at least a couple of orders of magnitude more accurate and can keep track of its own time. that is absolutely amazing.

[@ahobimo732]

I've gotta say... Linus is a seriously legit "computer geek". He knows his stuff. I remember hearing about this card a couple weeks ago, but I had no idea that it had such wide-ranging utility.

[@ChrisSmith-tc4df]

Neither Rubidium nor Cesium clocks are radioactive. Radioactive decay tends to be random, which would defeat the purpose anyway. Instead they rely upon atomic resonance.

[@danilolimadossantos1]

Rubidium 87 (used in rubidium clocks) is radioactive, through beta decay(almost undetectable so, with a half life of 4.9x10^10, more than the age of the universe). But I believe what you wanted to say it's that it is not used for its radioactivity, because Atomic clocks to not really on radioactive decay.

[@sstorholm]

As someone who actually works with trying to keep clocks in check, the issue with PTP isn’t generally getting the time onto the box that distributes it, but the distribution itself. PTP relies on network hardware measuring their own delay, and adding it to the link delay between the server and the client. This results in PTP only working on interconnected layer 2 networks, and PTP being an absolute mess to do over large distances. In a single broadcast studio it’s not too bad, but just the network gear required is already non-trivial.

[@verzocktes]

Please implement it into your office's atleast in a small form that would be so dope to watch :D

[@joeltowart8396]

Finally, 1v1's across the globe can be fair in latency.

[@siccoblue2112]

1v1 me coward, rust, snipers only, 3:45:02:000000000001 exactly. too late or too early? you forfeit.

[@bilateralrope8643]

Until someone starts altering the timestamps on their packets for an advantage. Then game servers will quickly go back to ignoring the timestamp.

[@dustinbrueggemann1875]

@@bilateralrope8643 The whole point of this system is that timestamping is standardized. They literally mention latency tampering in the video. If you fudge your packet timestamp, it still won't help you because the receiving systems have all been keeping time anyway. The margin you'd have to edit your packet by is greater than the margin of error for these clocks, and the system can throw it out.

[@2jpu524]

I developed FPGAs for automotive lidar, and used the pulse-per-second to synchronize the data streams for an array of sensors. GPS is extremely useful in combination with a low parts-per-million vctcxo quartz crystal oscillator. You have a lower root-allan-variance when using an GPS + atomic clock + VCTCXO, than you would by using just a GPS + VCTCXO, but the latter is still exceptional. One issue with rubidium atomic clocks is that it's a lamp that degrades over time. if you stick with GPS + a VCTCXO, it will las for a decade or more. One important consideration with your GPS antenna is making sure you can connect to the satellite by having it on a window or the roof. You GPS module likely has some sort of API interface to track how many satellites you're connected to. In any case, this is very important to get the worldwide time-syncrhonization you're after.

[@mrigtp0529]

Yay, i can finally see the nanoseconds of gpus being in stock.

[@leggo0]

This is incredible technology! I cant wait to see how this changes things!

[@teddy4271]

"Tell me if we get signal main screen turn on" has got to be quite the relic these days and I still appreciate it every time I hear it from you Linus.

[@therealpirate70]

(Edit) Linus: "Did you just say Alex is inbred?" Alex: "What?" XDDDDD

[@tf2scoutpunch175]

Linus is Linux itself confirmed?

[@therealpirate70]

@@tf2scoutpunch175 Whoops my bad- corrected it

[@jonathanpage6813]

I would love to see an LMG office implementation to see a closer-to-real-world example of improvements.

[@axing_]

maybe they could implement it into their content creation pipeline to significantly lower time differences between channel super fun videos?

[@SuperSpecies]

To be precise, submarine fibre optic cables no longer use repeaters, as in, a conversion from optical to electrical to optical signals. They use Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifiers (EDFAs), which are a pure optical to optical amplification technique (powered by pump lasers at different wavelengths, which are powered by electricity). As to whether these still fail I'm not sure, they are usually dual redundant pump lasers and they are built with a 25 year lifespan.

[@serceband]

When your nuclear expansion card starts thermal throttling and eventually shuts down then you potentially have a tiny Chernobyl on your hands

[@ultimaogaming529]

I think Kim's son use nuclear card for gaming

[@trff-imi2346]

This is one of the more interesting tech pieces i've seen in a while, thanks!

[@johngangemi1361]

These have been around for years but the atomic oscillator, drive and time circuits are the most expensive parts and calibration is very expensive. PTP has been a game changer for synchronising clocks over communication networks. These clocks are so precise even relativistic effects have to be taken into account such as GPS and other satellites. Great video.

[@LubosMudrak]

*clocks :-)

[@johngangemi1361]

@@LubosMudrak thankyou. I made a typo 🤣 not intentional.

[@pattychee906]

i love the amount of research that linus puts into these videos

[@tobezoned504]

The last five minutes of this felt like a vsauce episode XD

[@aidanb7782]

Hey I grew up less than an hour from LIGO, crazy. Lot's of field trips there when I was a kid, lot's of weird and insane technology in that desert in South Eastern Washington state. As mentioned there's LIGO, there's the Hanford Reactor clean up site, there's PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory). Never thought I'd see my hometown in an LTT video

[@ethangingrich7624]

I actually use ptp relatively often to sync up a bunch of cameras for customers at work, sometimes they need incredible precision and PTP sometimes barely cuts it surprisingly enough because they want even tighter timings for whatever reason