Why Unreliable Clocks Threaten Distributed Systems—and How to Fix Them

This article examines how unreliable physical clocks—both wall and monotonic—affect distributed systems, compares synchronous and asynchronous network timing, illustrates conflicts caused by timestamp drift, and presents logical clocks and Google’s TrueTime as robust solutions for achieving consistent ordering and data reliability.

Distributed SystemsLogical ClockTrueTime

0 likes · 11 min read

Why Unreliable Clocks Threaten Distributed Systems—and How to Fix Them

Radish, Keep Going!

Feb 6, 2025 · Databases

How Google Cloud Spanner Achieves Global Scale with Paxos and TrueTime

This article explains how Google Cloud Spanner combines relational database features with NoSQL scalability, using multi‑version storage, TrueTime, Paxos consensus, and dynamic sharding to deliver a globally distributed, strongly consistent, high‑availability database solution.

Google Cloud SpannerPaxosScalability

0 likes · 15 min read

How Google Cloud Spanner Achieves Global Scale with Paxos and TrueTime

Code Ape Tech Column

Feb 19, 2021 · Databases

Understanding Timestamps in Distributed Transactions: TSO, TrueTime, Lamport Clock, and HLC

This article explains the role of timestamps in distributed transaction processing, comparing implementations such as MVCC‑based TSO, Google’s TrueTime, Lamport logical clocks, and Hybrid Logical Clocks, and discusses their impact on linearizability, consistency guarantees, and practical designs like TiDB Async Commit.

ConsistencyDistributed TransactionsHLC

0 likes · 14 min read

Understanding Timestamps in Distributed Transactions: TSO, TrueTime, Lamport Clock, and HLC

Architecture Digest

Nov 7, 2017 · Databases

Event Ordering, Logical Clocks, TrueTime, and Hybrid Logical Clock in Distributed Systems

The article explains how distributed systems achieve linearizability by using logical clocks, TrueTime, Hybrid Logical Clocks, and Timestamp Oracle mechanisms to establish a global ordering of events despite clock skew and network delays.

Distributed SystemsLinearizabilityLogical Clock

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Event Ordering, Logical Clocks, TrueTime, and Hybrid Logical Clock in Distributed Systems

High Availability Architecture

Jul 6, 2017 · Databases

Linearizability, Serializability, and TrueTime in Google Spanner

This article explains the concept of linearizability, contrasts it with serializability, and describes how Google Spanner uses the TrueTime API and commit‑wait mechanisms to provide external consistency and reliable snapshot reads in a globally distributed database system.

ConsistencyDistributed SystemsLinearizability

0 likes · 17 min read

Linearizability, Serializability, and TrueTime in Google Spanner

Qunar Tech Salon

May 20, 2015 · Databases

An Overview of Google Spanner: Architecture, Design, and Concurrency Control

This article provides a comprehensive overview of Google Spanner, a globally distributed, multi‑version database, covering its background, core components, TrueTime‑based global synchronization, Paxos replication, data model, and the various transaction and concurrency mechanisms it employs.

Database ArchitectureGoogle SpannerPaxos replication

0 likes · 19 min read

An Overview of Google Spanner: Architecture, Design, and Concurrency Control