Short version of this post: look/click at/on the pictures.
Long(er) version of this post: read below ; -)
Recently a friend of mine offered me rack space in his colocation facility. This facility is connected directly to AMSIX, the nr. 1 internet exchange in the World, located in Amsterdam.
He also donated a surplus server, provided that I prepared the server for precision timekeeping.
First I had ‘bad ideas’ of ‘beating’ Poul-Henning Kamp’s gps.dix.dk by using my FE-5680A Rb-standard, programmed for 14.31818 MHz, as reference for the system clock PLL, in combination with a GPS receiver.
Secondly, I thought that I could never beat the combination of PHK, a Soekris, and -presumably- his own ntp server software ntpns. So, I defined offering time stamps within +/- 1 us as my goal.
Thirdly, I thought of locking the 14.31818 MHz PLL reference to GPS, but what should I gain, relative to my goal?
Fourthly, I am more into hardware than into (recent) software, remember?
The donated server has an ASUS TUSI-M P1266 motherboard with 1024 MB memory.
I chose FreeBSD (rel-7.0) as OS because LinuxPPS does not support the time_pps_kcbind() option (yet), and compiled a new kernel with PPS_SYNC enabled. My experience is that FreeBSD PPS-implementation reacts more ’smoothly’ on temperature changes than LinuxPPS.
Here, at home, the ntp kernel PLL offset remained within +/- 5 us limits due to the central heating system switching on and off (it is winter now and people are skating ; -).
So, this was not enough, although I knew that my server shall be located in a temperature controlled area.
Before considering ‘the GPS-locked system clock option’, I was curious how the system clock would behave in a more stable temperature environment, i.e. its temperature sensitivity.
I decided to ‘thermostatise’ the 14.31818 MHz PLL reference crystal, and built a thermostat around a ‘good old’ uA723, a power transistor, and two diodes as temperature sensor. I mounted the power transistor, and diodes on folded copper foil, and soldered the copper foil directly on the 14.31818 MHz crystal near the ICS PLL chip to achieve optimal conduction.
The temperature converged to approx. 45 Celsius and remained stable within ca. 0.1 C.
The difference between ‘before’ and ‘after’ can be seen in the first picture of this post, acquired by the Utrecht University (I studied there, and obtained my PhD there), which is monitoring my server out of curiousity. The result of the thermostat is almost a flat line, and the kernel PLL offset stays within +/- 1 us with this setup!
Normal performance (left), and performance with ‘thermostatised’ system clock PLL reference crystal (right).
Want to look the inside of Time.remco.org?
Here is a picture of its ‘thermostat Mk1′, and this is a picture of its built-in Rockwell Jupiter GPS receiver.
Within the colocation area a special coaxial cable has been routed towards the roof of the building for the Time.remco.org GPS antenna. Therefore, for future expansions and/or experiments I created a DC blocked HF GPS out, to connect more GPS receivers to one antenna, and a 1 PPS output (synchronised to GPS), to offer PPS to other (timing) machines in the colocation area. Ntpd can run perfectly with PPS only, provided that you have a networked time reference.
Pictures of the installation of Time.remco.org will appear later (in a separate posting)!!
Note: the above mentioned server is disconnected, ready to be shipped to the colocation facility. You can use/monitor another ‘themostatised’ FreeBSD machine: ntp.remco.org, member of the NTP pool. Its behaviour is somewhat less, due to less optimal hardware, but its PLL offset remains within +/- 2 us limits.