Quick, Standard Measurement for CPU Power?

captnitro asks: "A particular research project I'm developing right now needs to compare 'potential' (idle/none) and 'load' for various hardware capabilities, and quickly -- maybe up to a several times every minute. For disk space, for RAM, it's relatively easy -- find what's used and what's not and report the ratio. For CPU, I have plenty of time to test 'potential' when the app starts. But for testing CPU load, I need a standard 'ruler' that will be able to compare across varying platforms and processors (e.g., x86, PowerPC, embedded, single and multi-proc) -- so for example, idle percentage won't work. At the same time, I don't have the ability to time 'openssl speed' every 25 seconds without bringing the system to a halt. I'm willing to sacrifice precision of the measurement for generalization of the unit -- that is, the operations that this test is for would be primarily mathematical and not say, text sorts -- but I'd prefer a generic, quick test of the current processor load rather than an average of 25 different tests. Regardless of hardware, the OS distribution is mostly *nix-based -- NetBSD, Linux, and even Mac OS X. Wild ideas are perfectly acceptable -- any thoughts?"

Comments

Bogomips

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone understands bogomips, right?

Easy - CPU Speeds

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick
Fast
Freakin Fast
Holy Shit
Dude you r0x0r
OMFG

Oh, just so you know, you should always buy at the Holy Shit level. If you buy OMFG you pay too much and you will soon regret buying anything less than Freakin Fast. But Holy Shit and you will be happy for a couple to three years without paying too much.

Re:Flops

[Nutria]

back when engineers built computers instead of marketers

Engineers now build marketers?