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For a Uni assignment, I've written a Java program that System.out.writes chunk by chunk of text files to the console. We're doing some resource cost tests in Linux with the time command to see the execution time with different chunk sizes (chunk size is one of the arguments of the program). We're asked to:

Write documentation where you explain the results of your time measurements. Can you give a rough estimate of the overhead incurred by each system call?

I am confused by the last sentence. What exactly am I being asked to do?

  1. What is overhead?
  2. What does it mean when overhead has "incurred"?
  3. How do I estimate amount of incurred overheads?

(Question 3) I may be able to answer myself if 1) and 2) is answered.)

user3324865
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  • For "incurred", I think "caused" is a close enough synonym. – ajb Mar 17 '14 at 17:45
  • Overhead in this context is "the amount of time spent in the system call, unrelated to doing the task at hand", which in your case appears to be "writing a string to stdout". – Jerry Andrews Mar 17 '14 at 18:14

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