millisecondduration

Millisecondduration refers to a duration expressed in milliseconds, where one millisecond equals one thousandth of a second. The term is commonly used in computing, measurement, and timing contexts and is typically abbreviated as ms. A millisecondduration specifies how long an event lasts, the delay before an action, or the interval between periodic tasks.

In practice, millisecondduration is measured using clocks or timers. Modern systems often provide high-resolution timers, but the precision of a recorded duration depends on the operating system, hardware, and timer resolution. When performing arithmetic, a millisecondduration can be converted to seconds by dividing by 1000, to microseconds by multiplying by 1000, or to nanoseconds by multiplying by 1,000,000. For example, 250 ms equals 0.250 seconds, 250,000 µs, and 250,000,000 ns.

Common use cases include benchmarking software performance, measuring network latency, scheduling tasks, and controlling animation or audio buffer timing. In user-facing contexts, perceived delays on the order of a few hundred milliseconds can be noticeable, while sub-50 ms latencies are often considered more responsive.

Some data formats express durations in milliseconds as integers, while others prefer decimal seconds (for example, 0.250 s). ISO 8601 durations can encode milliseconds within a second as part of a decimal fraction of the second (for instance, PT0.250S). The term millisecondduration is descriptive but less common; most references simply use millisecond or duration in milliseconds.