Hoptroff London

Hoptroff London

Type	Private
Founded	2010
Founders	Richard Hoptroff, Simon Kenny, David Hulbert
Headquarters	London, England
Products	Traceable Time as a Service (TTaaS)
Website	hoptroff.com

Hoptroff London offers a timing synchronization service that enables companies to monitor, manage and optimise the performance of automated processes across distributed computer and cloud infrastructure. Hoptroff London provides proprietary, industrial timing solutions, Traceable Time as a Service (TTaaS) with sub-microsecond accuracy.^[1]

The company was previously a watch manufacturer based in London, England, reputed for its atomic clock and high accuracy watches.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}

History

Hoptroff London was founded in 2010 by Richard Hoptroff,^[7] a physicist with the original intention of supplying smart mechanical watch movements to the industry.^[8] In 2012, the company incorporated Bluetooth Low Energy technology^[5] to its watches for the movement and sync with the mobile phones for configuration in order to display internet connected information.^[7][9] Hoptroff London kept the manufacturing in-house to focus on the high precision and innovative complications.

In April 2013, the company unveiled its first atomic timepiece in London, which conceptualized it as a new variety of time regulation devices in clocks and watches, that could be placed alongside the balance spring, quartz crystal and the pendulum.^[6] After the launch, the brand gained a reputation for the most accurate watch ever produced^[10] and was mentioned in several media outlets, such as New York Times , Engadget, The Telegraph and others.^[11] In 2015, Hoptroff London launched a classic quartz watch range with a claim to being the first watchmaker to achieve better than one second per year accuracy in its quartz watches.^[12][13]

Traceable Time synchronization service

In 2015, the company reinvented itself as Hoptroff London Limited and started work building a proprietary network of timing hubs, incorporating Grand Master atomic clocks, in London, New York and Tokyo. The low latency feeds from these hubs can be used by technology and financial services companies to monitor the performance of automated processes. These timing hubs can deliver time with an accuracy of one microsecond (1µs), by using low latency “Spoke” connectivity to deliver the time feed to the customer’s required location. Hoptroff Time-Suite software installed on local servers, then synchronizes the local server clock with the timing signal and either stores the timing logs in the cloud or enables the customer to store them locally for reference. The TTaaS system accurately measures, monitors and logs timing of automated events, via an unbroken verifiable chain, traceable from the original Universal Time (UTC) source down to the application itself. This helps technology companies in the verification of smart contracts and blockchain applications, monitoring of machine learning applications to comply with GDPR and the timing compliance regulations of MiFid II and CAT.^[14]

Technology

Hoptroff London watches are advertised by the company as "The most accurate timepieces in the world”. Its atomic timepieces use chip scale atomic clock technology,^[15] where a small vessel of Caesium 133 is exposed to 130 °C.^[16] A laser is used to excite the atoms and a microwave resonator which causes the hyperfine transition frequency of the atoms. The resultant watch after this process has a higher accuracy of 1.5 seconds every thousand years.^[17][18]

However, the technology used its quartz timepieces is still unknown to the public.^[16]

As of 2015, the company moved away from watch production and focus on high accuracy time synchronization to companies operating across distributed infrastructure, by making it a network service without any additional infrastructure required at the different data centres where their customers have located their servers.

See also

• Bluetooth low energy
• Chip-scale atomic clock

References

External links

• Official website

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