Measuring CPU speeds ( was RE: Why isn't Apple releasing patches for the Month of Apple )

[aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk]

 --- arcarlini at iee.org wrote: 
> Tony Duell wrote:
> 
> > However, 'What is an instruction?'. I've heard i
t
> said that the 11/780
> > averaged 500,000 of its machine instructions per
> second, but that that
> > was about as much processing as 10^6 of other
> machine's instructions
> 
> The VAX-11/780 cranked out about as many Dhrystone
s
> as an
> IBM System/370 158 which did (apparently) chew
> through about
> one million instructions per second.
> 

**>> snip <<**

> Antonio
> 


Speaking of Dhrystones.... what is one?
Also, what does the MHz, or GHz, measure
exactly?

I understand MIPS (Million Instructions Per
Second), FLOPS (Floating-point Operations Per
Second) and G-FLOPS (Giga-FLOPS) but the
aforementioned two are a mystery to me.


Regards,
Andrew D. Burton
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk