About the Atomic Reference Time (ART) Card

The architecture of the ART Card as well as the software architecture that will manage the card are intended to be embedded in any Open Compute server to build a PTP Grand Master.

This new timing card has been developed in the framework of the Time Appliances Project (TAP), a sub-project initiated by the Open Compute Project (OCP).

Key Features of the ART Card

• First PCie card including an atomic time reference from Safran, the mRO-50, in addition to all necessary elements to create a GNSS clock (a specific GNSS timing receiver for multi-constellation and multi-frequency)
• ART Card supports PCIe standard in X4
• State-of-the-art linux driver
  Includes a software to monitor synchronization of the atomic clock reference (mRO-50) on the GNSS, while providing an API and the support of a PTP Hardware Clock (PHC)
• Detection of GNSS signals quality to switch to holdover mode, using stable atomic oscillator to provide resilient time and low time derivation

About the Time Appliances Project

The Open Compute Project (OCP) initiated a sub-project called Time Appliances Project (TAP) dedicated to time in datacenters. This project aims to provide a platform to bring together, discuss, standardize and share technologies and solutions across industries with the datacenter applications and datacenter network infrastructure as the main interest.

Time appliances project aims to support the development of a PTP profile for datacenter applications and datacenter network infrastructure. This profile will cover time-sensitive applications over OCP-compliant and PTP-aware networking infrastructure such as network switches, network clocks, network interface cards, timing modules & connectors, etc.

Additionally, the profile will address various requirements for high accuracy and reliable distribution and synchronization of time, such as expected performance, networking, software API, data models, deployment and telemetry. The project also aims at openness and interoperability using open-source PTP software implementations for timing appliances.

Want to learn more?

To know more about this ongoing project please contact the O2S team using the form below.