CPU and Processor Time Counter

Read this introduction to computer performance and information about computing processor time. In most programming languages, there is a process to measure elapsed time, such as time() in C. By subtracting the time at the beginning of a process from the time at the end you get the total time for a particular operation. Usually short operations are put in a loop that repeats the operation a sufficient number of times to get an accurate measurement.

About

CPU time: The count of cycles, also known as clockticks, forms the basis for measuring how long a program takes to execute.

Definition

How do you measure Execution Time?

$\begin{array}{rll} && \text{Kernel} && \text{Time} \\ + &&\text{User} && \text{Time} \\ \hline \\ && \text{Total} && \text{Time} \end{array}$

CPU Time	Running which code
Kernel (Sys) Time	Operating system code - the time of CPU spent on the kernel (system) code only within the given process - other processes and the time when our process is blocked are not included.
User Time	Time CPU spends running the program code (ie CPU time spent on non-kernel (user-mode) code only within the given process – so other processes and the time when our process is blocked are not included.).
Total time	User + Kernel
Real Time	Wall clock (total elapsed time) (can be lower than total time because of parallelism or longer because of wait) - user-perceived time it took to execute the command – from the start to the end of the call, including time slices used by other processes and the time when our process is blocked (e.g. I/O waiting)

Process Explorer

To see CPU time, you can look at the performance tab of a process in Process Explorer:

Red in the CPU usage graph indicates CPU usage in kernel-mode whereas green is the sum of kernel-mode and user-mode execution.

A data collector set can be configured via logman.exe to log the “% Processor Time” counter in the “Processor Information” object for this purpose.

Formula

Every conventional processor has a clock with a fixed cycle time (or clock rate). At every CPU cycle, an instruction is executed.

$\text{CPU Time} = \text{CPU cycles executed} * \text{Cycle times}$

$\text{CPU cycles} = \text{Instructions executed} * \text{Average Clock Cycles per Instruction (CPI)}$

Putting it all together:

$\text{CPU Execution Time} = \text{Instructions count} * \text{CPI} * \text{Clock Cycle Time}$

where:

$\begin{array}{rll} \text{Instructions Count} && = && \frac{\displaystyle Instructions}{\displaystyle Programs} \\ \text{CPI} && = && \frac{\displaystyle Cycles}{\displaystyle Instruction} \\ \text{Clock Cycle Time} &&= && \frac{\displaystyle Seconds}{\displaystyle Cycle} \end{array}$

Note:

CPI is somewhat artificial (since it is computed from the other numbers) but it seems to be intuitive and useful.
Use dynamic instruction count (#instructions executed), not static (#instructions in compiled code)