System Options under UNIX

FULLSTIMER System Option: UNIX

Specifies whether to write all available system performance statistics and the datetime stamp to the SAS log.

Default:	NOFULLSTIMER
Valid in:	configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, SASV9_OPTIONS environment variable
Category:	Log and procedure output control: SAS log
PROC OPTIONS GROUP=	LOGCONTROL
UNIX specifics:	all

Syntax
Details
See Also

Syntax

-FULLSTIMER | -NOFULLSTIMER

FULLSTIMER | NOFULLSTIMER

FULLSTIMER: writes to the SAS log a list of the host-dependent resources that were used for each step and for the entire SAS session. A datetime stamp is included in the output.
NOFULLSTIMER: does not write to the SAS log a complete list of resources or a datetime stamp.

Details

SAS uses the getrusage() and times() UNIX system calls for your operating environment to obtain the statistics presented with FULLSTIMER. The datetime stamp is also listed in the output. The following is an example of FULLSTIMER output:

FULLSTIMER Output

NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
            real time           0.01 seconds
            user cpu time       0.00 seconds
            system cpu time     0.00 seconds
            Memory                            236k
            OS Memory                         5672k
            Timestamp            3/16/2006  9:13:39 AM
            Page Faults                       3
            Page Reclaims                     24
            Page Swaps                        0
            Voluntary Context Switches        11
            Involuntary Context Switches      1
            Block Input Operations            2
            Block Output Operations           0

Note: If both FULLSTIMER and STIMER system options are set, the FULLSTIMER statistics are printed. [cautionend]

FULLSTIMER displays the following statistics:

Description of FULLSTIMER Statistics
Statistic	Description
Real Time	the amount of real time (clock time) that is spent to process the SAS job. Real time is also referred to as elapsed time.
User CPU Time	the CPU time that is spent in the user program.
System CPU Time	the CPU time that is spent to perform operating system tasks (system overhead tasks) that support the execution of your SAS code.
Memory	the amount of memory required to run a step.
OS Memory	the largest amount of operating system memory that is available to SAS during the step.
Timestamp	the date and time that a step was executed.
Page Faults	the number of pages that SAS tried to access but were not in main memory and required I/O activity.
Page Reclaims	the number of pages that were accessed without I/O activity.
Page Swaps	the number of times a process was swapped out of main memory.
Voluntary Context Switches	the number of times that the SAS process had to pause because of a resource constraint such as a disk drive.
Involuntary Context Switches	the number of times that the operating system forced the SAS session to pause processing to allow other process to run.
Block Input Operations	the number of I/O operations that are performed to read the data into memory.
Block Output Operations	the number of I/O operations that are performed to write the data to a file.

For more information about these statistics, see the man pages for the getrusage() and times() UNIX system calls.

Note: Starting in SAS 9, some procedures use multiple threads. On computers with multiple CPUs, the operating system can run more than one thread simultaneously. Consequently, CPU time might exceed real time in your FULLSTIMER output.

For example, a SAS procedure could use two threads that run on two separate CPUs simultaneously. The value of CPU time would be calculated as the following:

CPU1 time + CPU2 time = total CPU time
1 second + 1 second = 2 seconds

Because CPU1 can run a thread at the same time that CPU2 runs a separate thread for the same SAS process, you can theoretically consume 2 CPU seconds in 1 second of real time. [cautionend]