Re: [PATCH] timekeeping: handle epoch roll-over (2038) on 32-bit systems

From: Michael Gilbert
Date: Sat Aug 24 2013 - 20:10:15 EST


Thomas Gleixner writes:
> That time value should be 64bit, also people might argue, that we are
> creating a new issue for the year 2554, i.e 541 years from now. I
> don't think we need to worry about that really. We have to leave our
> grand-grand-grand..grandchildren (~20 generations from now) a few
> unsolved problems!

Or at the measly cost of 8 additional bytes, solve the problem well and good
for the entirety of the human race :)

128 (unsigned) bits defers the rollover problem for 1e-9*(2**128)/3600/24/365
= 1e22 years, or 770 billion times longer than the current age of the
universe.

That of course hedges on a 128-bit integer C standard within the next 25
years ;)

Best wishes,
Mike

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/