Elapsed time refers to the amount of “wall clock” time from initiation to termination of the application. For typical sorting applications, elapsed time is composed primarily of I/O time, with CPU time and I/O queueing time also contributing significantly.

The Elapsed time for an application can differ from run to run, depending upon the amount of competition from other applications for system resources. Accurate Elapsed time comparisons can be done only if the system has no other applications running.