Clocks for Dolphin

This interoffice memorandum, written by Dan Murphy in 1978, evaluates existing clock handling mechanisms in the TOPS-20 operating system and proposes hardware improvements. The document highlights the overhead and inaccuracies associated with maintaining multiple time bases (1 millisecond and 10 microsecond clocks) and provides suggestions for more efficient hardware-level implementation. Additionally, the author analyzes runtime measurement techniques and concludes that while EBOX/MBOX accounting on the KL10 has limited utility, it should be retained, and the focus should remain on providing efficient and reproducible runtime accounting without adding unnecessary complexity.