This is not affected by other processes and by the time it possibly spends blocked. User time measures the amount of time the CPU spent in user-mode, i.e. Similar to process time, but leverages the more accurate CPU clock counter available on the Pentium and PowerPC platforms. Hence, process time is likely to be constant for any given performance test, irrespective of the machine load.
It is unaffected by any other processes running concurrently on the same system. Process time measures the time taken by the process.
It is affected by any other processes concurrently running on the system. Wall time measures the real world time elapsed during the test run. A brief description of each metric and their availability across interpreters/modes is given below. The availability of each metric is determined by the interpreter being used-none of them support all metrics-and by the mode in use. Benchmarking and profiling run performance tests and give you multiple metrics.
