wall time

wall time

(Or "wall clock time") 1. "Real world" time (what the clock onthe wall shows), as opposed to the system clock's idea oftime.

2. The real running time of a program, as opposed to thenumber of ticks required to execute it (on a time-sharingsystem these always differ, as no one program gets all theticks, and on multiprocessor systems with good thread supportone may get more processor time than real time).