Is time.sleep() a CPU bound operation?

Question

I've recently read in this asyncio article

time.sleep() is a CPU bound operation

I usually connected with "CPU bound" that the CPU is actually doing something. So if one has time.sleep(60) in a program (A) and then executes

A: Gets 1 second
B: Gets 59 seconds (uninterrupted)
A: Finished or not?

I always thought about timers being IO. Is that wrong? Or are timers just something special, so that they don't fit into the "IO-bound" / "CPU bound" schema?

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered May 25 '20 at 06:22

5

It's not. That article is misusing terminology.

A CPU-bound operation is one whose speed is limited by the speed of CPU execution, as opposed to the speed of memory access or network round trips or some other factor. time.sleep is not such an operation. A faster CPU does not make time.sleep any faster.

answered May 25 '20 at 06:22

user2357112

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I see your reasoning and it goes in line with mine. But is time.sleep I/O bound? – Martin Thoma May 25 '20 at 06:52
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@MartinThoma: No. Performing I/O faster will not make `time.sleep` faster either. – user2357112 May 25 '20 at 06:58
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So time.sleep is neither I/O nor CPU bound (but time-bound ). Makes sense to me :-) – Martin Thoma May 25 '20 at 06:59

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 25 '20 at 06:24

0

Martin Thoma

No, it isn't CPU Bound.

Document Says.

You can also found similar information from here is a time sleep

answered May 25 '20 at 06:24

Dipen Shah

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Is time.sleep() a CPU bound operation?

2 Answers2