Each of the three clocks specified in Clocks [time.clock] provides the member function:

static time_point now();

The semantics specified by Clock requirements [time.clock.req] make no mention of error handling. Thus the function may throw bad_alloc or an implementation-defined exception ([res.on.exception.handling] paragraph 4).

Some implementations of these functions on POSIX, Windows, and presumably on other operating systems, may fail in ways only detectable at runtime. Some failures on Windows are due to supporting chipset errata and can even occur after successful calls to a clock's now() function.

These functions are used in cases where exceptions are not appropriate or where the specifics of the exception or cause of error need to be available to the user. See N2828, Library Support for hybrid error handling (Rev 1), for more specific discussion of use cases. Thus some change in the interface of now is required.

The proposed resolution has been implemented in the Boost version of the chrono library. No problems were encountered.