Microsecond

Microsecond

A microsecond is an SI unit of time equal to one millionth (0.000001 or 10^-6 or 1/1,000,000) of a second. Its symbol is μs, a Greek mu for micro and s for second.

Overview

The microsecond is a common unit of time to use in the fields of science and engineering, especially in high-speed electronics and physics. The speed of light in a vacuum provides an upper limit on the speed at which any information can travel, which is approximately 300 kilometers per microsecond.

Applications

In computer architecture, microsecond is a common unit of time. For example, the RAM access time of many early microprocessors, such as the Intel 8080, was about one microsecond. Modern microprocessors have much shorter times and therefore use nanoseconds (ns) and even picoseconds (ps).

See also

• Nanosecond
• Picosecond
• Millisecond
• Second