Synchronization

:This article is about the term Synchronization. For the article on the magazine, see Sync (magazine).

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Synchronization is coordination with respect to time. It is an important concept in the following fields:

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• Computer science
• Physics
• Telecommunication
• Cryptography
• Multimedia
• Photography
• Music (rhythm)

Synchronization has several subtly distinct sub-concepts:

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• Rate synchronization
• Phase synchronization
• Time offset synchronization
• Time order synchronization

Two different time sequences may be synchronized in one sense without being synchronized in another, or synchronized at one time scale whilst being asynchronous in another.

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Systems operating with all their parts in synchrony are said to be synchronous.

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Some systems may be only approximately synchronized, or plesiochronous.

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For some applications relative offsets between events need to be determined, for others only the order of the event is important.

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The idea of simultaneity has many difficulties, both in practice and theory.

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Synchronization: Some uses of synchronization ►