New Timestamp Format and API

by Chen Li for Network Time Foundation

There are different timescales being used everywhere, like UTC and GPS. When user application gets timestamp from system, it can’t tell which timescale the system is using. What’s more, the timestamp being used may step backward in cases such as system time is set manually, which could be disaster to time-sensitive applications. So this idea aim to design and implement a new timestamp format and API that will never step backward and provide an easy-to-use interface for programs to fetch timestamp and process with it.