Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
When a program wants to time its own operation, it can use a function like the POSIX clock() function, which returns the CPU time used by the program. POSIX allows this clock to start at an arbitrary value, so to measure elapsed time, a program calls clock(), does some work, then calls clock() again. [1] The difference is the time needed to do ...
For example, with two executions units, two new instructions are fetched every clock cycle by exploiting instruction-level parallelism, therefore two different instructions would complete stage 5 in every clock cycle and on average the number of clock cycles it takes to execute an instruction is 1/2 (CPI = 1/2 < 1).
computes the difference in seconds between two time_t values time: returns the current time of the system as a time_t value, number of seconds, (which is usually time since an epoch, typically the Unix epoch). The value of the epoch is operating system dependent; 1900 and 1970 are often used. See RFC 868. clock
The number of instructions per second is an approximate indicator of the likely performance of the processor. The number of instructions executed per clock is not a constant for a given processor; it depends on how the particular software being run interacts with the processor, and indeed the entire machine, particularly the memory hierarchy.
Instructions per second (IPS) is a measure of a computer's processor speed. For complex instruction set computers (CISCs), different instructions take different amounts of time, so the value measured depends on the instruction mix; even for comparing processors in the same family the IPS measurement can be problematic.
Software timekeeping systems vary widely in the resolution of time measurement; some systems may use time units as large as a day, while others may use nanoseconds.For example, for an epoch date of midnight UTC (00:00) on 1 January 1900, and a time unit of a second, the time of the midnight (24:00) between 1 January 1900 and 2 January 1900 is represented by the number 86400, the number of ...
Since in concurrent computing the definition of elapsed time is non-trivial, the conceptualization of the elapsed time as measured on a separate, independent wall clock is convenient. Another definition of "wall time" is the measurement of time via a separate, independent clock as opposed to the local system time (internal), i.e. with regard to ...
The resolution of an implementation's measurement of time does not imply the same precision of such measurements. For example, a system might return the current time as a value measured in microseconds, but actually be capable of discerning individual clock ticks with a frequency of only 100 Hz (10 ms).