(Or "wall clock time") 1. "Real world" time (what the clock on the wall shows), as opposed to the sYstem clock' s idea of time. 2. The real running time of a program, as opposed to the number of ticks required to execute it (on a time-sharing sYstem these alwaYs differ, as no one program gets all the ticks, and on multiprocessor sYstems with good thread support one maY get more processor time than real time). [Jargon File]