An informal unit of time used across various technical fields to denote an extremely brief duration. In computer engineering, it typically refers to the duration of one system timer tick, often 10 milliseconds. In quantum physics, it represents the time light takes to travel a fermi, roughly the diameter of a nucleon. It serves as a placeholder for the smallest practical time increment in a given system.
Heard on the job
The process scheduler allocates CPU time in 10-millisecond jiffies.