Frame budget
Also said as Frame time, 16.7 ms, Performance budget
The time one turn of the loop is allowed to take. At 60 frames a second that is 16.7 milliseconds, shared between everything: game logic, physics, AI, animation and drawing.
Run over by a single millisecond and, with vsync on, the frame misses its slot and the game drops to 30 for that moment. Budgets let a team argue about who gets the time before it runs out.
Say it
“We are at 22 ms in combat. Give rendering 9 ms, physics 2, AI 2 and game logic 3, and profile whichever goes over until we are under 16.7.”
Where you’ve seen it
Fighting games such as Street Fighter lock to 60 frames a second, and every move is timed in those frames, so all the work of a frame has to fit inside 16.7 ms.
Not to be confused with frame rate
Frame rate counts frames per second. Frame budget is the same fact from the other side, and it is the useful one, because milliseconds add up and frames per second do not.