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Jitter

Jitter is the deviation of a time signal from its ideal point in time. Jitter in operating systems come from nondeterminism.
The nondeterminism can be introduced at many levels in the computer architecture. For instance, the cache present in modern processors introduces nondeterminism in the amount of time that is taken to perform memory operations. This nondeterminism manifests itself as a small amount of jitter in the operating system.
Another example, this time in the operating system itself, the the nondeterminism that is introduced in the scheduling algorithms of most operating systems. This nondeterminism is introduced because the operating system must examine the execution of all tasks in the system to determine which task should be running. Because the number of running tasks in a system can vary widely, a large amount of jitter can often times be introduced.

RD Glossary by Run Digital