Access time is the time delay or
latency between a request to an electronic system, and the access being completed or the requested data returned
* In a
computer, it is the time interval between the instant at which an
instruction control unit initiates a call for
data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...
or a request to
store data, and the instant at which delivery of the data is completed or the storage is started.
See also
*
Memory latency
''Memory latency'' is the time (the latency) between initiating a request for a byte or word in memory until it is retrieved by a processor. If the data are not in the processor's cache, it takes longer to obtain them, as the processor will ha ...
*
Mechanical latency
Latency, from a general point of view, is a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed. Lag, as it is known in gaming circles, refers to the latency between the input to a simulation and t ...
*
Rotational latency
*
Seek time Higher performance in hard disk drives comes from devices which have better performance characteristics. These performance characteristics can be grouped into two categories: access time and data transfer time (or rate).
Access time
The ''acce ...
References
Network access
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