Is it possible for computers to tell time without a built in clock?

Posted by CrazyJugglerDrummer on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by CrazyJugglerDrummer
Published on 2010-04-03T01:56:37Z Indexed on 2010/04/03 2:03 UTC
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Computers keep time normally with a built in clock on the motherboard. But out of curiosity, can a computer tell time without this?

I would think not as a computer can only execute instructions. Of course, you could rely on the computer knowing its own processing speed, but that would be an extremely crude hack that would take up way too many clock cycles and be error prone.

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