TIMEXTIMEX3

TIMEXTIMEX3 is a cross-platform software framework designed for high-precision time measurement and event timestamping in distributed systems and instrumentation. It provides deterministic timing primitives and a unified API for accessing hardware clocks and software timers, enabling sub-microsecond accuracy on supported platforms and reproducible timing across processes and machines.

The TIMEX family, including TIMEXTIMEX3, aims to standardize time measurement interfaces across devices and programming environments. TIMEXTIMEX3 represents the third major release in this lineage, incorporating improvements in clock stability, hardware timestamping support, and a modular backend architecture to accommodate a range of platforms and use cases. The project emphasizes reproducibility, low-latency event handling, and traceable timing data for researchers and engineers.

Key components of TIMEXTIMEX3 include a timing core that exposes high-resolution clocks, a synchronization module capable of interfacing with network time protocols and hardware timestamping, a timestamping subsystem for precise event tagging, and pluggable backends that support different operating systems and hardware timers. The framework offers bindings or interfaces for multiple programming languages, commonly including C and C++, with extensions for higher-level languages where available. Features such as deterministic event ordering, latency measurement, and timing data provenance assist in benchmarking and scientific measurement.

TIMEXTIMEX3 is used in data acquisition, experimental physics, seismology, industrial automation, and robotics, where precise timing of events is critical. It supports integration with hardware timestamping NICs, timer cards, and software emulation, and is designed to operate on Linux, Windows, and certain real-time operating systems, with considerations for virtualization and kernel integration. The project is distributed under an open-source license with community governance and contribution guidelines. See also TIMEX, PTP, NTP, and high-resolution timers.