Definition of "real time" []

• The actual time in which a physical process under computer study or control occurs. (noun)
• The time required for a computer to solve a problem, measured from the time data are fed in to the time a solution is received. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "For a news organization, the wizardry of hyperlinking, the speed-of-light availability of data it took research assistants days or weeks to laboriously gather two decades ago, audio and video on demand, the ability to update news in real time 24/7 and deliver it to millions of people for free, all make the Internet the future of news."
• "The coordinators have estimated that the project took about eight months of real time and used approximately 5000 MIPS-years of computing time."
• "Even in Mireio this lack of well-defined individuality in the characters begins to be apparent, but, in general, the action of the earlier poem is confined to the world of realities, whereas in Calendau the poet has given free play to a brilliant and vivid imagination, launching forth into the heroic and incredible, yet without abandoning the world of real time and real places."