most accurate time type in java?

I wa开发者_开发技巧nt to compare the performance of certain operations in my application.

Other than using the Date object, is there anything more precise?

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public static long nanoTime() - Returns the current value of the most precise available system timer, in nanoseconds.

As Zach Scrivener states in his answer:

My guess is that since System.nanoTime() uses the "most precise available system timer" which apparently only has millisecond-precision on your system, you can't get anything better.

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If you're measuring elapsed time by subtracting two timestamps, you should use System.nanoTime() to get those timestamps. That's what it's for.

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To get the CPU time you can use the getCurrentThreadCpuTime of the Thread Management Bean.
It returns the CPU time used by the actual thread in nanoseconds:

    ThreadMXBean threadMX = ManagementFactory.getThreadMXBean();
    long time = threadMX.getCurrentThreadCpuTime();

    // do something 

    time = threadMX.getCurrentThreadCpuTime() - time;  // CPU time in nanoseconds

check the documentation for details and some problems like CPU time measurement not being enabled.