Meinberg Joins the OCP Time Appliances Project (OCP-TAP)

The Open Compute Project (OCP), founded in 2011, is a rapidly-growing, global community that aims to drive the development of new technology with a view to improving the scalability and energy efficiency and reducing the complexity of data centers, a goal that gains all new meaning in such an age as ours where data centers govern so many aspects of our lives—cloud storage, content delivery, social media, and audio & video telephony over IP are all highly data-intensive applications that have resulted in the explosive growth of hyperscale data centers around the world.

As a leading provider of timing & synchronization technology for the data center sector, Meinberg is pleased to be a Community Member of the OCP, in which we are an active contributor to the Time Appliances Project—or simply "TAP", contributing innovations such as Meinberg's own NetSync Monitor protocol for monitoring PTP infrastructure.

Other projects that the OCP-TAP is working on at present include the development of a new IEEE1588-2008 (PTPv2) profile specifically for data center operations, which Meinberg will of course be supporting in its industry-grade PTP grandmaster clocks such as the microSync and IMS LANTIME systems.

Synchronization plays a multifaceted role in the operation of data centers. One of the most obvious and relatable applications for a time server are the hyperscale public NTP services operated by the world's leading technology companies, allowing trillions of smartphones, PCs, and entertainment systems around the world to be supplied with accurate time. Many of these NTP services are powered by Meinberg's own SyncFire servers.

But synchronization is also essential for a multitude of behind-the-scenes processes. Meinberg's time servers ensure that data is correctly timestamped for compliance purposes. They play a key role in the prioritization of data feeds, providing schedulers with the accurate time they need to implement first-in-first-out (FIFO) pipelines or manage contributions in collaborative working systems. In finance, accurate synchronization is essential in data centers to ensure compliance with requirements such as MiFID II, which mandates accuracy levels of 100 microseconds for the management of trades.

Effective and secure synchronization plays an essential role in improving the scalability, efficiency, and compliance of data centers in a variety of ways, and Meinberg is at the forefront of this, supplying industry-leading timing & synchronization technology to many of the globally most important tech giants for use in their hyperscale data centers.

As such, we are pleased to be part of the OCP, where we can contribute to making synchronization more efficient and more scalable for the industry. The OCP allows us to keep our ear to the ground when it comes to the needs of data center operators, and events such as the recent OCP Global Summit in San Jose, California have proven to be excellent forums for exchanging knowledge and experience with customers and industry partners.

Through our membership, we look forward to helping to forge the future of timing & synchronization for data center operators.