> Never say never. :) There are wifi, ethernet, and clock shields for Arduino, all of which are running microcontrollers, and many applications which would benefit from using NTP.
FYI: Microcontrollers really ought to just be interpreting the WWVB radio signal (aka: the 60,000 Hz Atomic Clock radio signal throughout the entire continental USA). Alternatively, Microcontrollers easily connect up to GPS modules for an alternative radio signal / alternative time source.
If anything, Microcontrollers are a great interface to the 60kHz Atomic Clock signal and are therefore would probably be the best NTP-server.
In any case, the "real" best architecture is probably a microcontroller doing Radio Logic / digital signal processing for WWVB, and that is connected through a simple connection (ex: I2C that says the last announced time from the WWVB signal) helping a "bigger" Raspberry Pi. And the Raspberry Pi can handle the ethernet / server stuff
FYI: Microcontrollers really ought to just be interpreting the WWVB radio signal (aka: the 60,000 Hz Atomic Clock radio signal throughout the entire continental USA). Alternatively, Microcontrollers easily connect up to GPS modules for an alternative radio signal / alternative time source.
If anything, Microcontrollers are a great interface to the 60kHz Atomic Clock signal and are therefore would probably be the best NTP-server.
In any case, the "real" best architecture is probably a microcontroller doing Radio Logic / digital signal processing for WWVB, and that is connected through a simple connection (ex: I2C that says the last announced time from the WWVB signal) helping a "bigger" Raspberry Pi. And the Raspberry Pi can handle the ethernet / server stuff