access time

Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Financial, Acronyms, Wikipedia.

access time

Computing the time required to retrieve a piece of stored information

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

access time

[′ak·ses ‚tīm]

(computer science)

The time period required for reading out of or writing into the computer memory.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

access time

(hardware, storage)

The average time interval between a storage peripheral (usually a disk drive or semiconductor memory) receiving a request to read or write a certain location and returning the value read or completing the write.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)