wall time
nounEtymology Ellipsis of wall-clock time.
1
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences The actual time of day, as would be seen on a wall clock; contrasted with the (possibly inaccurate) time according to a computer system.
2
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences The actual amount of time taken from the start to the end of an operation, as opposed to CPU time, which only includes the periods of time during which the CPU was processing instructions.
- Additionally, determining the wall time for specific functions or control structures (e.g. for loops) can help identify the most computationally-intensive portion of your program, and indicate which sections should be optimised if possible.2019, Joshua Izaac, Jingbo Wang, Computational Quantum Mechanics, Springer, →ISBN, page 158:
- Related terms
- delta time