SAS System Options under Windows

STIMER System Option: Windows

Writes a subset of system performance statistics to the SAS log.

Default:	STIMER
Valid in:	configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, SAS System Options window
Category:	Log and procedure output control: SAS log
PROC OPTIONS GROUP=	LOGCONTROL
Windows specifics:	Reported statistics

Syntax
Details
Comparisons
See Also

Syntax

-STIMER | -NOSTIMER

STIMER | NOSTIMER

STIMER: writes real-time and CPU time to the SAS log.
NOSTIMER: does not write real-time and CPU time to the SAS log.

Details

The STIMER system option prints to the SAS log the amount of time it took for SAS to complete a DATA step or procedure task.

The following is an example of STIMER output:

real time      0.96 seconds       
cpu time       0.01 seconds

STIMER displays the following statistics:

Description of STIMER Statistics
Statistic	Description
Real-Time	the amount of time spent to process the SAS job. Real-time is also referred to as elapsed time.
CPU Time	the total time spent to execute your SAS code and spent to perform system overhead tasks on behalf of the SAS process. This value is the combination of the user CPU and system CPU statistics from FULLSTIMER.

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 STIMER output. [cautionend]

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

Since 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.

Comparisons

The STIMER system option specifies whether a subset of all the performance statistics of your operating environment that are available to SAS are written to the SAS log. The FULLSTIMER system option specifies whether all of the available performance statistics are written to the SAS log.