Thanks all for the feedback
Clarification:
For ITER, we'll have a IEEE 1588-2008 network to provide time accuracy "below 1 micro-second", as per the norm, and below 50 ns with a properly configured network and maybe better as time goes.
(People interested in IEEE 1588-2008 can contact us, BTW)
Controllers will also be interfaced to fast communication network for feedback but that's another story.
The time expression won't be far in future (long pulses are still expressed in minutes) but they shall be precise.
To sum up the type aspect:
- A pair of integer is required& signed integers are good enough for now ... provided that UINT32 support is completed within the next 68 years.
- Relative time (pulse time), with ns precision can fit in a FLOAT64 for 125 hours or something like that, which would be OK for us.
- A ns precision for a software interrupt is somehow excessive and microsecond precision would fit into a FLOAT64 mantissa but it's not very good to have many resolutions.
We are considering a waveform with 2 ints for time PVs and maybe FLOAT64 records for relative time (pulse time).
I also guess that pvData will/shall allow time struct with ns fractions in the API.
