A High-Precision Stopwatch for C#

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Introduction

This article presents the Performance.Stopwatch class. This class provides a stopwatch-like behavior using kernel32.dll's QueryPerformanceCounter. It offers split time and elapsed time with microsecond precision, and also provides a formatted System.TimeSpan for longer operations. This class is essentially a no-frills stopwatch for measuring the performance of your code.

Background

So I've decided to venture into the world of C#, and needed to see for myself how my application's performance measures up against my C++ code. In order to compare proverbial "apples-to-apples", I needed a high-resolution "stopwatch" to time my code. After some poking around, I saw some alternative ways to do this, however I decided to write my own in order to address the shortcomings of others.

Using the code

The class offers the following public methods:

Method	Description
void Start()	Starts the stopwatch.
void Stop()	Stops the stopwatch.
void Reset()	Resets the stopwatch.
TimeSpan GetElapsedTimeSpan()	Returns the elapsed time in the form of a System.TimeSpan.
TimeSpan GetSplitTimeSpan()	Returns the split time in the form of a System.TimeSpan.
double GetElapsedTimeInMicroseconds()	Returns the elapsed time in microseconds.
double GetSplitTimeInMicroseconds()	Returns the split time in microseconds.

An example of how to use this class is given below:

Performance.Stopwatch sw = new Performance.Stopwatch();

sw.Start();

for(int i=0; i<10; i++)
{
   System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100);
   Console.Write("Split time: ");
   Console.Write(sw.GetSplitTimeInMicroseconds().ToString());
   Console.WriteLine(" microseconds.");
}

sw.Stop();

Console.Write("Total process time: ");
Console.Write(sw.GetElapsedTimeSpan().ToString());
Console.WriteLine(".");

This code produces the following output:

Split time: 101403.390654399 microseconds.
Split time: 202629.105095759 microseconds.
Split time: 302948.000374349 microseconds.
Split time: 403266.616287824 microseconds.
Split time: 503606.184584912 microseconds.
Split time: 603955.251295905 microseconds.
Split time: 704231.124346809 microseconds.
Split time: 804552.254546318 microseconds.
Split time: 904863.327601692 microseconds.
Split time: 1005186.13399189 microseconds.
Total process time: 00:00:01.0050000.

Points of Interest

The primary benefit of this class over others is that it provides the user with a System.TimeSpan interface. This makes it easy to display formatted status information or to calculate how long an operation will take to complete. The class also has a built-in calibration such that a sequential call to Start() and Stop() should result in an elapsed time of 0 +/- 0.500 microseconds.

History

• 17.Jan.2006 - Initial release.