Million Instructions per Second (MIPS) Measure

References

(Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second Retrieved:2017-9-5.
- The speed of a given CPU depends on many factors, such as the type of instructions being executed, the execution order and the presence of branch instructions (problematic in CPU pipelines). CPU instruction rates are different from clock frequencies, usually reported in Hz, as each instruction may require several clock cycles to complete or the processor may be capable of executing multiple independent instructions simultaneously. MIPS can be useful when comparing performance between processors made with similar architecture (e.g. Microchip branded microcontrollers). They are difficult to compare between differing CPU architectures.^[1].
  For this reason, MIPS has become not a measure of instruction execution speed, but task performance speed compared to a reference. In the late 1970s, minicomputer performance was compared using VAX MIPS, where computers were measured on a task and their performance rated against the VAX 11/780 that was marketed as a 1 MIPS machine. (The measure was also known as the VAX Unit of Performance or VUP.) This was chosen because the 11/780 was roughly equivalent in performance to an IBM System/370 model 158-3, which was commonly accepted in the computing industry as running at 1 MIPS.