wall clock time(response time)

Wall-clock time, or wall time, is the human perception of the passage of time from the start to the completion of a task. In the context of a task being performed on a computer, wall-clock time is a measure of the real time that elapses from start to end, including time that passes due to programmed (artificial) delays or waiting for resources to become available. In other words, it is the difference between the time at which a task finishes and the time at which the task started.

In computing, wall-clock time can also mean the actual time taken by a computer to complete a task. It is the sum of three terms: CPU time, I/O time, and the communication channel delay (e.g. if data are scattered on multiple machines). In contrast to CPU time, which measures only the time during which the processor is actively working on a certain task, wall time measures the total time for the process to complete. The difference between the two consists of time that passes due to programmed delays or waiting for resources to become available.

For programs executed in parallel, the CPU time will be the sum of CPU times devoted to the task by each CPU running it. In this case the wall time will be substantially reduced (it takes less perceived time to finish), whereas the total CPU time will remain equal to the one for serial execution (plus some overhead for parallelization).

响应时间包括硬盘访问、内存访问、I/O操作和操作系统开销等时间。用户感受到的是响应时间。

cpu（执行）时间只表示在cpu上花费的时间，而不包括等待I/O或运行其他程序的时间。cpu时间可以进一步划分为user cpu time以及system cpu time。

基于响应时间和基于cpu时间的性能差异用于不同术语描述。使用系统性能表示空载系统的响应时间，使用cpu性能表示user cpu time。不同的应用会关注计算机系统性能的不同方面。

参考资料：

[维基百科](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall-clock_time)
[computer organization and design](https://book.douban.com/subject/1468468/)