Weekly Takeaways-September 27, 2021

It is well understood that all modern networks and electronics rely on a timing signal from GPS that is not nearly secure or accurate enough for the job. How do you solve this problem? With entangled photons! Our Product and Strategy Lead, Tanya Ramond, describes the path to a new space-based timing architecture using quantum technology in a recent TTI/Vanguard presentation that you can check out here. The quantum links form the core of a secure and accurate time distribution between satellites and ground nodes. The last mile timing distribution can utilize traditional methods, but will benefit from the recent Facebook Time Appliance which was released as an open source design. The timing accuracy improvement yields huge benefits for distributed databases: “making the timekeeping 80x more precise (making any time discrepancies 80x smaller) made a distributed database run 3x faster - an incredible performance boost on the same server hardware, just from keeping more accurate and more reliable time.” But the long term goal is an accurate and secure timing system that is completely independent of GPS, providing benefits for all telecommunications, networks, industrial robotics, IOT devices, autonomous vehicles, and position devices.