Amazon Time Sync Service brings microsecond time to 26 more EC2 instances!

Hey everyone, it's me, Shii-chan! Today is all about time. Keeping accurate time sounds simple, but in computing it's a big deal, and AWS just made microsecond-accurate time available on a lot more instances!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

This one comes from AWS's What's New. The Amazon Time Sync Service now supports microsecond-accurate time on 26 additional EC2 instance types, across all commercial regions.

It leans directly on the reference clocks running inside the AWS Nitro System, and it can even give you nanosecond-precision hardware timestamps.

The story so far

Until now, microsecond-accurate time was only available on a limited set of instance types. If you needed to order events across a distributed system or measure one-way network latency, having only a few eligible instances was a bit of a headache.

What changes

With 26 more instance types supported, you have a lot more room to pick the right instance for time-sensitive workloads. Microsecond-accurate time lets you order application events, measure one-way network latency, and speed up transaction processing in distributed apps.

There's also a new placement strategy called a Precision Time Placement Group (PTPG). Create one, and you can launch instances with the Precision Time Protocol hardware clock (PHC) enabled.

Dive Deep

Want both low network latency and microsecond-accurate time? You can associate a PTPG with your Cluster Placement Group (CPG), so your low-latency workloads also get microsecond-accurate time. The step-by-step setup lives in the Amazon Time Sync Service documentation.

Wrap-up

• Amazon Time Sync Service now supports microsecond-accurate time on 26 EC2 instance types (all commercial regions)
• It uses the AWS Nitro System's reference clocks directly and offers nanosecond-precision hardware timestamps
• A new Precision Time Placement Group (PTPG) lets you launch instances with PHC enabled
• You can pair a PTPG with a Cluster Placement Group (CPG) for both low latency and high-precision time
• Great for engineers who need to order events or take precise measurements across distributed systems!