time.perf_counter only shows units like 37724.0057971 seconds in Python

My code is:

from multiprocessing import Process, cpu_count
import time


def counter(num):
    count = 0
    while count < num:
        count += 1

def main():
    a = Process(target=counter, args=(500,))
    b = Process(target=counter, args=(500,))

    a.start()
    b.start()

    a.join()
    b.join()

    print("finished in", time.perf_counter(), " seconds.")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

it takes under 1 sec yet some weird number of seconds is displayed.
I tried it with 1 billion and still got some random number like 377724.5675..,
As far as I know perf_counters shows time in seconds, but here I am confused. Can anyone explain?

>Solution :

time.perf_counter() starts from an arbitrary point in time, but counts in seconds.

If you’re looking for time elapsed, keep track of the start time, then compute a duration.

start_time = time.perf_counter()
# ... do work ...
end_time = time.perf_counter()
duration = end_time - start_time