White Rabbit – sub-nanosecond synchronization for large distributed systems | Hacker News

A Hacker News post discussed CERN’s White Rabbit timing technology and a paper on its design.

White Rabbit synchronizes Ethernet physical layers directly, achieving sub-nanosecond timing precision.

The system can keep distributed machines aligned over distances of up to 10 km.

This matters for scientific instruments, industrial control, and other coordinated systems that need extremely accurate timing.