Manual timing support.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 2ccfd50..051b301 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md
@@ -175,6 +175,45 @@ Without `UseRealTime`, CPU time is used by default. + +## Manual timing +For benchmarking something for which neither CPU time nor real-time are +correct or accurate enough, completely manual timing is supported using +the `UseManualTime` function. + +When `UseManualTime` is used, the benchmarked code must call +`SetIterationTime` once per iteration of the `KeepRunning` loop to +report the manually measured time. + +An example use case for this is benchmarking GPU execution (e.g. OpenCL +or CUDA kernels, OpenGL or Vulkan or Direct3D draw calls), which cannot +be accurately measured using CPU time or real-time. Instead, they can be +measured accurately using a dedicated API, and these measurement results +can be reported back with `SetIterationTime`. + +```c++ +static void BM_ManualTiming(benchmark::State& state) { + int microseconds = state.range_x(); + std::chrono::duration<double, std::micro> sleep_duration { + static_cast<double>(microseconds) + }; + + while (state.KeepRunning()) { + auto start = std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now(); + // Simulate some useful workload with a sleep + std::this_thread::sleep_for(sleep_duration); + auto end = std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now(); + + auto elapsed_seconds = + std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::duration<double>>( + end - start); + + state.SetIterationTime(elapsed_seconds.count()); + } +} +BENCHMARK(BM_ManualTiming)->Range(1, 1<<17)->UseManualTime(); +``` + ### Preventing optimisation To prevent a value or expression from being optimized away by the compiler the `benchmark::DoNotOptimize(...)` function can be used.