Detecting real-time clock loss

An application (or process) may have an amount of steady state work to perform per unit time, as well as one or more mechanisms for doing a lower quality job of that work in the event the application falls behind. Approaches presented herein can utilize a clock monitor that enables the application to determine whether a clock loss was encountered that was due to an external source, and is of an amount of time that may be naturally recoverable by the application. If so, the application can enter into a mode of operation wherein the activation of one or more recovery mechanisms is postponed for a period of time to provide the application time to recover. If, after the period of such mode operation, the application has not recovered from the real time clock loss, then the recovery mechanism(s) can be activated as appropriate.