Resolution
This year (2002), a timer resolution of tenths of microseconds would be sufficient for almost any software purpose. No current processor can execute quickly enough to make a microsecond seem like a long time. But processors are still getting faster, and we hope the RTSJ will have a useful life longer than two or three years. Nanosecond measurement is the next stopping place. It seems likely to remain a useful timer resolution for at least a decade. (That sounds a lot like “640K should be enough for anyone” doesn't it?) Specifying a timer resolution of picoseconds seems absurd.
Given nanosecond resolution, a 32-bit integer was definitely too small. It would only represent an interval of about plus or minus 2 seconds. A 64-bit long integer ...
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