1. A method of measuring the time required to execute a program in a data processing environment having a plurality of processors, including a first processor and a last processor, wherein each processor in the plurality of processors has a clock, the method comprising: for each clock in the plurality of processors, setting a skew between each clock to a time greater than the expected time required to execute a program to be measured; beginning execution of the program on the first processor; reading a start time using the clock of the first processor; completing execution of the program on the last processor; reading an end time using the clock of the last processor; and calculating an elapsed time as the difference between the start time and the end time.