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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

wall time en · NOUN

Etymology

Ellipsis of wall-clock time.

Meanings

  1. (uncountable) 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. (uncountable) 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:

Coordinates

user time · CPU time

Relateds

delta time

Synonyms

clock time · wall-clock time · real-world time · elapsed real time