Are even quicker blocks possible?

[xor644078]

Yes, I want to try running it in a local network with fast blocks.
I looked into the code. It seems that it is more complicated than just changing a type of one variable. Seconds as integers are used everywhere in the code, so if I change type of this one variable, I will have to also change many things depending on it.

[Thom]

Is it possible to set time interval between blocks to less than 1 second? I am running a private graphene/bitshares blockchain. When I try to set "block_interval": 0.5 in my-genesis.json file, I get an error saying "Floating point exception (core dumped)".
I guess witness_node software is not programmed to handle block intervals less than a second.

Is there a fundamental limitation that does not allow to create and distribute blocks in a network in this case? What would happen if say 0.1 second blocks are used? Will there be many forks created and no consensus?

It seems you are a coder?
The parameter is an int. It would be not too hard to change it to what you want if put in a bit more efforts.
Theoretically shorter interval will work if all your nodes are in same local network.

Yes, I suspect you're right abit, but the code must be capable of working in a decentralized (i.e. non local) context hence it seems logical to use an int rather than imposing the increased overhead of using floating point arithmetic for these calculations.

This is certainly worth consideration for plasma, if that is still being considered for business applications and getting any cycles to develop or market.

[abit]

Is it possible to set time interval between blocks to less than 1 second? I am running a private graphene/bitshares blockchain. When I try to set "block_interval": 0.5 in my-genesis.json file, I get an error saying "Floating point exception (core dumped)".
I guess witness_node software is not programmed to handle block intervals less than a second.

Is there a fundamental limitation that does not allow to create and distribute blocks in a network in this case? What would happen if say 0.1 second blocks are used? Will there be many forks created and no consensus?

It seems you are a coder?
The parameter is an int. It would be not too hard to change it to what you want if put in a bit more efforts.
Theoretically shorter interval will work if all your nodes are in same local network.

[Fox]

Limitation is latency in distributing and processing blocks to form consensus of chain state.

We ran a testnet at one second block times and found too many forks as network distribution scaled. NTP has been sited as a limitation if shorter than 3 second block interval is to be adopted.

[xor644078]

Is it possible to set time interval between blocks to less than 1 second? I am running a private graphene/bitshares blockchain. When I try to set "block_interval": 0.5 in my-genesis.json file, I get an error saying "Floating point exception (core dumped)".
I guess witness_node software is not programmed to handle block intervals less than a second.

Is there a fundamental limitation that does not allow to create and distribute blocks in a network in this case? What would happen if say 0.1 second blocks are used? Will there be many forks created and no consensus?