Re: [Tzdist] [saag] Fwd: WGLC for draft-ietf-tzdist-service-05

[Lester Caine <[e-mail]>]

On 31/01/15 22:34, Paul Eggert wrote:
>> some devices such as central heating controllers
>> would not need a processor capable of the sort of processing power
>> needed to handle that
> 
> Even the lowliest central heating controller can easily handle the
> entire tz database, if only to discard unneeded parts as they're
> received.  We're talking kilobytes here, not gigabytes or even megabytes.

We are talking about a type of processor with 32k bytes of ROM, the
majority of which is already populated by the TCP stack and other
software needed simply to provide the very basic network interface. Of
cause one can dictate that tzdist is only usable on larger devices but
we are talking about devices that are being built to a price and any
unnecessary excess gets trimmed. Yes the device can simply throw
everything it does not need away, but that still requires it to handle
all of the tzdist data stack rather than just a simple extract for the
next year of a single TZ.

What is perhaps amazing here is that the first controllers I designed
had just 1024 words of ROM but provided a 2/5 weekly cycle timer, and
nothing much has changed in that area in 30 years.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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