I wanted to calculate the difference in execution time when executing the same code inside a function. To my surprise, however, sometimes the clock difference is 0 when I use clock()/clock_t for the start and stop timer. Does this mean that clock()/clock_t does not actually return the number of clicks the processor spent on the task?
After a bit of searching, it seemed to me that clock_gettime() would return more fine grained results. And indeed it does, but I instead end up with an abitrary number of nano(?)seconds. It gives a hint of the difference in execution time, but it's hardly accurate as to exactly how many clicks difference it amounts to. What would I have to do to find this out?
#include <math.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
#define M_PI_DOUBLE (M_PI * 2)
void rotatetest(const float *x, const float *c, float *result) {
float rotationfraction = *x / *c;
*result = M_PI_DOUBLE * rotationfraction;
}
int main() {
int i;
long test_total = 0;
int test_count = 1000000;
struct timespec test_time_begin;
struct timespec test_time_end;
float r = 50.f;
float c = 2 * M_PI * r;
float x = 3.f;
float result_inline = 0.f;
float result_function = 0.f;
for (i = 0; i < test_count; i++) {
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &test_time_begin);
float rotationfraction = x / c;
result_inline = M_PI_DOUBLE * rotationfraction;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &test_time_end);
test_total += test_time_end.tv_nsec - test_time_begin.tv_nsec;
}
printf("Inline clocks %li, avg %f (result is %f)\n", test_total, test_total / (float)test_count,result_inline);
for (i = 0; i < test_count; i++) {
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &test_time_begin);
rotatetest(&x, &c, &result_function);
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &test_time_end);
test_total += test_time_end.tv_nsec - test_time_begin.tv_nsec;
}
printf("Function clocks %li, avg %f (result is %f)\n", test_total, test_total / (float)test_count, result_inline);
return 0;
}
I am using gcc version 4.8.4 on Linux 3.13.0-37-generic (Linux Mint 16)
First of all: As already mentioned in the comments, clocking a single run of execution one by the other will probably do you no good. If all goes down the hill, the call for getting the time might actually take longer than the actual execution of the operation.
Please clock multiple runs of the operation (including a warm up phase so everything is swapped in) and calculate the average running times.
clock() isn't guaranteed to be monotonic. It also isn't the number of processor clicks (whatever you define this to be) the program has run. The best way to describe the result from clock() is probably "a best effort estimation of the time any one of the CPUs has spent on calculation for the current process". For benchmarking purposes clock() is thus mostly useless.
As per specification:
The clock() function returns the implementation's best approximation to the processor time used by the process since the beginning of an implementation-dependent time related only to the process invocation.
And additionally
To determine the time in seconds, the value returned by clock() should be divided by the value of the macro CLOCKS_PER_SEC.
So, if you call clock() more often than the resolution, you are out of luck.
For profiling/benchmarking, you should --if possible-- use one of the performance clocks that are available on modern hardware. The prime candidates are probably
The HPET
The TSC
Edit: The question now references CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, which is Linux' way of exposing the TSC.
If any (or both) are available depends on the hardware in is also operating system specific.
After googling a little bit I can see that clock() function can be used as a standard mechanism to find the tome taken for execution , but be aware that the time will be varying at different time depending upon the load of your processor,
You can just use the below code for calculation
clock_t begin, end;
double time_spent;
begin = clock();
/* here, do your time-consuming job */
end = clock();
time_spent = (double)(end - begin) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
I have simple function which takes random words and puts them in lexicographical order using insertion sort algorithm.I have no problem with function(It works,tested),but when i try to measure execution time of function using two different clock() values, i get same values before and after the execution of function,so it shows 0 as elapsed time
clock_t t1 = clock();
InsertionSort(data, n);
clock_t t2 = clock();
/*
* Display the results.
*/
for (size = i, i = 0; i < size; ++i)
{
printf("data[%d] = \"%s\"\n", (int)i, data[i]);
}
/*
* Display the execution time
*/
printf("The time taken is.. %g ", (t2 -t1));
The time difference is too small to be measured by this method, without adding more code to execute. – Weather Vane
Usually, you contrive a way to measure a large number of loops of what you want to time. 10, 100, 1000, whatever produces a significant result. Bear in mind too that on a multi-tasking OS each iteration will take a slightly different time, and so you'll also establish a typical average.The result might also be affected by processor caching and/or file caching. – Weather Vane
Try like this:
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
double gettime(void)
{
struct timediff td;
double d=0;
gettimeofday(&td, NULL);
d=td.td_usec;
d+= (double)td.td_usecs / 1000000.;
return d;
}
double t1=gettime();
InsertionSort(data, n);
printf("%.6f", gettime() - t1);
or may be you need to change your code like this:
clock_t t1 = clock();
InsertionSort(data, n);
clock_t t2 = clock();
double d= double(t2- t1) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
You can also refer: Easily measure elapsed time
You are incorrectly using the floating-point format specifier %g. Try this
printf("The time taken is.. %u clock ticks", (unsigned)(t2 -t1));
Always assuming the execution time is longer than the granularity of clock().
I would like to know how I can program something so that my program runs as long as a second lasts.
I would like to evaluate parts of my code and see where the time is spend most so I am analyzing parts of it.
Here's the interesting part of my code :
int size = 256
clock_t start_benching = clock();
for (uint32_t i = 0;i < size; i+=4)
{
myarray[i];
myarray[i+1];
myarray[i+2];
myarray[i+3];
}
clock_t stop_benching = clock();
This just gives me how long the function needed to perform all the operations.
I want to run the code for one second and see how many operations have been done.
This is the line to print the time measurement:
printf("Walking through buffer took %f seconds\n", (double)(stop_benching - start_benching) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
A better approach to benchmarking is to know the % of time spent on each section of the code.
Instead of making your code run for exactly 1 second, make stop_benchmarking - start_benchmarking the total run time - Take the time spent on any part of the code and divide by the total runtime to get a value between 0 and 1. Multiply this value by 100 and you have the % of time consumed at that specific section.
Non-answer advice: Use an actual profiler to profile the performance of code sections.
On *nix you can set an alarm(2) with a signal handler that sets a global flag to indicate the elapsed time. The Windows API provides something similar with SetTimer.
#include <unistd.h>
#include <signal.h>
int time_elapsed = 0;
void alarm_handler(int signal) {
time_elapsed = 1;
}
int main() {
signal(SIGALRM, &alarm_handler);
alarm(1); // set alarm time-out to 1 second
do {
// stuff...
} while (!time_elapsed);
return 0;
}
In more complicated cases you can use setitimer(2) instead of alarm(2), which lets you
use microsecond precision and
choose between counting
wall clock time,
user CPU time, or
user and system CPU time.
I am running a C program using GCC and a proprietary DSP cross-compiler to simulate some functioality. I am using the following code to measure the execution time of particular part of my program:
clock_t start,end;
printf("DECODING DATA:\n");
start=clock();
conv3_dec(encoded, decoded,3*length,0);
end=clock();
duration = (double)(end - start) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
printf("DECODING TIME = %f\n",duration);
where conv3_dec() is a function defined in my program and I want to find the run-time of this function.
Now the thing is when my program runs, the conv3_dec() functions runs for almost 2 hours but the output from the printf("DECODING TIME = %f\n",duration) says that the execution of the function finished in just half a second (DECODING TIME = 0.455443) . This is very confusing for me.
I have used the clock_t technique to measure the runtimes of programs previously but the difference has never been so huge. Is this being caused by the cross-compiler. Just as a side note, the simulator simulates a DSP processor running at just 500MHz, so is the difference in the clock speeds of the DSP processor and my CPU causing the error is measuring the CLOCKS_PER_SEC.
clock measures the cpu time and not the wallclock time. Since you are not running the majority of your code on the cpu, this is not the right tool.
For durations like two hours, I wouldn't be too concerned about clock(), it's far more useful for measuring sub-second durations.
Just use time() if you want the actual elapsed time, something like (dummy stuff supplied for what was missing):
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
// Dummy stuff starts here
#include <unistd.h>
#define encoded 0
#define decoded 0
#define length 0
static void conv3_dec (int a, int b, int c, int d) {
sleep (20);
}
// Dummy stuff ends here
int main (void) {
time_t start, end, duration;
puts ("DECODING DATA:");
start = time (0);
conv3_dec (encoded, decoded, 3 * length, 0);
end = time (0);
duration = end - start;
printf ("DECODING TIME = %d\n", duration);
return 0;
}
which generates:
DECODING DATA:
DECODING TIME = 20
gettimeofday() function also can be considered.
The gettimeofday() function shall obtain the current time, expressed as seconds and microseconds since the Epoch, and store it in the timeval structure pointed to by tp. The resolution of the system clock is unspecified.
Calculating elapsed time in a C program in milliseconds
http://www.ccplusplus.com/2011/11/gettimeofday-example.html
I have a C program that aims to be run in parallel on several processors. I need to be able to record the execution time (which could be anywhere from 1 second to several minutes). I have searched for answers, but they all seem to suggest using the clock() function, which then involves calculating the number of clocks the program took divided by the Clocks_per_second value.
I'm not sure how the Clocks_per_second value is calculated?
In Java, I just take the current time in milliseconds before and after execution.
Is there a similar thing in C? I've had a look, but I can't seem to find a way of getting anything better than a second resolution.
I'm also aware a profiler would be an option, but am looking to implement a timer myself.
Thanks
CLOCKS_PER_SEC is a constant which is declared in <time.h>. To get the CPU time used by a task within a C application, use:
clock_t begin = clock();
/* here, do your time-consuming job */
clock_t end = clock();
double time_spent = (double)(end - begin) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
Note that this returns the time as a floating point type. This can be more precise than a second (e.g. you measure 4.52 seconds). Precision depends on the architecture; on modern systems you easily get 10ms or lower, but on older Windows machines (from the Win98 era) it was closer to 60ms.
clock() is standard C; it works "everywhere". There are system-specific functions, such as getrusage() on Unix-like systems.
Java's System.currentTimeMillis() does not measure the same thing. It is a "wall clock": it can help you measure how much time it took for the program to execute, but it does not tell you how much CPU time was used. On a multitasking systems (i.e. all of them), these can be widely different.
If you are using the Unix shell for running, you can use the time command.
doing
$ time ./a.out
assuming a.out as the executable will give u the time taken to run this
In plain vanilla C:
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
clock_t tic = clock();
my_expensive_function_which_can_spawn_threads();
clock_t toc = clock();
printf("Elapsed: %f seconds\n", (double)(toc - tic) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
return 0;
}
You functionally want this:
#include <sys/time.h>
struct timeval tv1, tv2;
gettimeofday(&tv1, NULL);
/* stuff to do! */
gettimeofday(&tv2, NULL);
printf ("Total time = %f seconds\n",
(double) (tv2.tv_usec - tv1.tv_usec) / 1000000 +
(double) (tv2.tv_sec - tv1.tv_sec));
Note that this measures in microseconds, not just seconds.
Most of the simple programs have computation time in milli-seconds. So, i suppose, you will find this useful.
#include <time.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
clock_t start = clock();
// Execuatable code
clock_t stop = clock();
double elapsed = (double)(stop - start) * 1000.0 / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
printf("Time elapsed in ms: %f", elapsed);
}
If you want to compute the runtime of the entire program and you are on a Unix system, run your program using the time command like this time ./a.out
(All answers here are lacking, if your sysadmin changes the systemtime, or your timezone has differing winter- and sommer-times. Therefore...)
On linux use: clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW, &time_variable);
It's not affected if the system-admin changes the time, or you live in a country with winter-time different from summer-time, etc.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <unistd.h> /* for sleep() */
int main() {
struct timespec begin, end;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW, &begin);
sleep(1); // waste some time
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW, &end);
printf ("Total time = %f seconds\n",
(end.tv_nsec - begin.tv_nsec) / 1000000000.0 +
(end.tv_sec - begin.tv_sec));
}
man clock_gettime states:
CLOCK_MONOTONIC
Clock that cannot be set and represents monotonic time since some unspecified starting point. This clock is not affected by discontinuous jumps in the system time
(e.g., if the system administrator manually changes the clock), but is affected by the incremental adjustments performed by adjtime(3) and NTP.
Thomas Pornin's answer as macros:
#define TICK(X) clock_t X = clock()
#define TOCK(X) printf("time %s: %g sec.\n", (#X), (double)(clock() - (X)) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC)
Use it like this:
TICK(TIME_A);
functionA();
TOCK(TIME_A);
TICK(TIME_B);
functionB();
TOCK(TIME_B);
Output:
time TIME_A: 0.001652 sec.
time TIME_B: 0.004028 sec.
A lot of answers have been suggesting clock() and then CLOCKS_PER_SEC from time.h. This is probably a bad idea, because this is what my /bits/time.h file says:
/* ISO/IEC 9899:1990 7.12.1: <time.h>
The macro `CLOCKS_PER_SEC' is the number per second of the value
returned by the `clock' function. */
/* CAE XSH, Issue 4, Version 2: <time.h>
The value of CLOCKS_PER_SEC is required to be 1 million on all
XSI-conformant systems. */
# define CLOCKS_PER_SEC 1000000l
# if !defined __STRICT_ANSI__ && !defined __USE_XOPEN2K
/* Even though CLOCKS_PER_SEC has such a strange value CLK_TCK
presents the real value for clock ticks per second for the system. */
# include <bits/types.h>
extern long int __sysconf (int);
# define CLK_TCK ((__clock_t) __sysconf (2)) /* 2 is _SC_CLK_TCK */
# endif
So CLOCKS_PER_SEC might be defined as 1000000, depending on what options you use to compile, and thus it does not seem like a good solution.
#include<time.h>
#include<stdio.h>
int main(){
clock_t begin=clock();
int i;
for(i=0;i<100000;i++){
printf("%d",i);
}
clock_t end=clock();
printf("Time taken:%lf",(double)(end-begin)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
}
This program will work like charm.
You have to take into account that measuring the time that took a program to execute depends a lot on the load that the machine has in that specific moment.
Knowing that, the way of obtain the current time in C can be achieved in different ways, an easier one is:
#include <time.h>
#define CPU_TIME (getrusage(RUSAGE_SELF,&ruse), ruse.ru_utime.tv_sec + \
ruse.ru_stime.tv_sec + 1e-6 * \
(ruse.ru_utime.tv_usec + ruse.ru_stime.tv_usec))
int main(void) {
time_t start, end;
double first, second;
// Save user and CPU start time
time(&start);
first = CPU_TIME;
// Perform operations
...
// Save end time
time(&end);
second = CPU_TIME;
printf("cpu : %.2f secs\n", second - first);
printf("user : %d secs\n", (int)(end - start));
}
Hope it helps.
Regards!
ANSI C only specifies second precision time functions. However, if you are running in a POSIX environment you can use the gettimeofday() function that provides microseconds resolution of time passed since the UNIX Epoch.
As a side note, I wouldn't recommend using clock() since it is badly implemented on many(if not all?) systems and not accurate, besides the fact that it only refers to how long your program has spent on the CPU and not the total lifetime of the program, which according to your question is what I assume you would like to measure.
I've found that the usual clock(), everyone recommends here, for some reason deviates wildly from run to run, even for static code without any side effects, like drawing to screen or reading files. It could be because CPU changes power consumption modes, OS giving different priorities, etc...
So the only way to reliably get the same result every time with clock() is to run the measured code in a loop multiple times (for several minutes), taking precautions to prevent the compiler from optimizing it out: modern compilers can precompute the code without side effects running in a loop, and move it out of the loop., like i.e. using random input for each iteration.
After enough samples are collected into an array, one sorts that array, and takes the middle element, called median. Median is better than average, because it throws away extreme deviations, like say antivirus taking up all CPU up or OS doing some update.
Here is a simple utility to measure execution performance of C/C++ code, averaging the values near median: https://github.com/saniv/gauge
I'm myself still looking for a more robust and faster way to measure code. One could probably try running the code in controlled conditions on bare metal without any OS, but that will give unrealistic result, because in reality OS does get involved.
x86 has these hardware performance counters, which including the actual number of instructions executed, but they are tricky to access without OS help, hard to interpret and have their own issues ( http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/articles/article213.html ). Still they could be helpful investigating the nature of the bottle neck (data access or actual computations on that data).
Every solution's are not working in my system.
I can get using
#include <time.h>
double difftime(time_t time1, time_t time0);
Some might find a different kind of input useful: I was given this method of measuring time as part of a university course on GPGPU-programming with NVidia CUDA (course description). It combines methods seen in earlier posts, and I simply post it because the requirements give it credibility:
unsigned long int elapsed;
struct timeval t_start, t_end, t_diff;
gettimeofday(&t_start, NULL);
// perform computations ...
gettimeofday(&t_end, NULL);
timeval_subtract(&t_diff, &t_end, &t_start);
elapsed = (t_diff.tv_sec*1e6 + t_diff.tv_usec);
printf("GPU version runs in: %lu microsecs\n", elapsed);
I suppose you could multiply with e.g. 1.0 / 1000.0 to get the unit of measurement that suits your needs.
If you program uses GPU or if it uses sleep() then clock() diff gives you smaller than actual duration. It is because clock() returns the number of CPU clock ticks. It only can be used to calculate CPU usage time (CPU load), but not the execution duration. We should not use clock() to calculate duration. We still should use gettimeofday() or clock_gettime() for duration in C.
perf tool is more accurate to be used in order to collect and profile the running program. Use perf stat to show all information related to the program being executed.
As simple as possible by using function-like macro
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
#define printExecTime(t) printf("Elapsed: %f seconds\n", (double)(clock()-(t)) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC)
int factorialRecursion(int n) {
return n == 1 ? 1 : n * factorialRecursion(n-1);
}
int main()
{
clock_t t = clock();
int j=1;
for(int i=1; i <10; i++ , j*=i);
printExecTime(t);
// compare with recursion factorial
t = clock();
j = factorialRecursion(10);
printExecTime(t);
return 0;
}
Comparison of execution time of bubble sort and selection sort
I have a program which compares the execution time of bubble sort and selection sort.
To find out the time of execution of a block of code compute the time before and after the block by
clock_t start=clock();
…
clock_t end=clock();
CLOCKS_PER_SEC is constant in time.h library
Example code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
int main()
{
int a[10000],i,j,min,temp;
for(i=0;i<10000;i++)
{
a[i]=rand()%10000;
}
//The bubble Sort
clock_t start,end;
start=clock();
for(i=0;i<10000;i++)
{
for(j=i+1;j<10000;j++)
{
if(a[i]>a[j])
{
int temp=a[i];
a[i]=a[j];
a[j]=temp;
}
}
}
end=clock();
double extime=(double) (end-start)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
printf("\n\tExecution time for the bubble sort is %f seconds\n ",extime);
for(i=0;i<10000;i++)
{
a[i]=rand()%10000;
}
clock_t start1,end1;
start1=clock();
// The Selection Sort
for(i=0;i<10000;i++)
{
min=i;
for(j=i+1;j<10000;j++)
{
if(a[min]>a[j])
{
min=j;
}
}
temp=a[min];
a[min]=a[i];
a[i]=temp;
}
end1=clock();
double extime1=(double) (end1-start1)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
printf("\n");
printf("\tExecution time for the selection sort is %f seconds\n\n", extime1);
if(extime1<extime)
printf("\tSelection sort is faster than Bubble sort by %f seconds\n\n", extime - extime1);
else if(extime1>extime)
printf("\tBubble sort is faster than Selection sort by %f seconds\n\n", extime1 - extime);
else
printf("\tBoth algorithms have the same execution time\n\n");
}