Emulation of a high-speed, high-stability clock

Abstract

A method and apparatus for emulating a high-precision, high-accuracy clock. In one embodiment, two clocks are used in the emulation. The first clock has precision greater than precision of the second clock and accuracy less than accuracy of the second clock. A checkpoint time relative to elapsed cycles of the second clock and a checkpoint cycle count of cycles of the first clock are periodically stored relative to a checkpoint period that lasts for a selected number of cycles of the second clock. A reference cycle rate of the first clock is calculated relative to the cycle rate of the second clock. The current time is determined as a function of the checkpoint time, a number of cycles of the first clock elapsed since storing the most recent checkpoint cycle count, and the reference cycle rate of the first clock.