re: What is a CPU second?

Chris Craddock wrote:


There is zero difference in the underlying time unit or the mechanism of
accumulating it. CPU time is simply the elapsed time that was spent
"dispatched" on a cpu - no matter how many tasks and/or SRBs there were
and no matter how many cpus there were or how fast they were. Don't
over think it.


An important corollary is that CP seconds are not normalized in any way. Nothing is done to make them more 'comparable' on faster and slower moderls or on uni- and multiprocessors.

A further word about terrminology is in order here. At least to those who care for language, CPU, Central Processing Unit, implies that there can be only one of them.

For multiprocessors IBM first tried to use the term CPE, Central Processing Element, for each of their component processors. It would have been agreeable if that term had taken hold, but it did not, and IBM gave up on it. We are thus left with CP, Central Processor, which is at least inoffensive.

In the upshot the traditional terms, CPU and Central Processing Unit, are now solecisms that should be avoided. Say and write CP or Central processor, even for a uniprocessor.

John Gilmore
Ashland, MA 01721-1817
USA

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