The total amount of material fed to or produced as a product from a process per unit time. It can be expressed as either a mass or a volumetric rate. In oil refineries, the throughput refers to the stream of feedstock supplied.
Computer
A figure-of-merit for a computer system in which some description of operating rate such as instructions per minute, jobs per day, etc., is used. It is a measure of how much work gets done in a given time interval. See alsobandwidth, latency.
Internet
The amount of data that can be transferred through a network within a certain time period. See also bandwidth.
Electronics and Electrical Engineering
A measure of the number of distinct signals or data packets that a system can process in a given time. It is typically measured by counting arriving signals or packets at their destination over a fixed time interval. See alsolatency.