Processor time
The processor time ( English CPU time ) describes the measured time in hours, minutes and seconds during which a process or thread has actually been executed by a processor since it was started. This sum is practically always lower than the entire runtime of the program, since it can hardly be run continuously even with intensive use.
Processor time as an intensity measure
With multitasking , different processes alternately access the processor. In a simultaneous access to the process assigned by the operating system decides priority (English process priority ), which is it performed first.
The sum of the processor time also provides good information about the frequency or intensity (keyword: computationally intensive ) with which a program uses the processor.