>> That's true. But assuming we want, say, a normal "double precision" 
>> floating point number, how many clock cycles would you estimate it 
>> takes to operation on? A dozen? A hundred?
> 
> My estimate would be that adding 2 floating points would be around 50 
> and multiplication more 100-150, but I could be an order of magnitude 
> wrong.

Right. Suddenly integer-only algorithms seem like a Big Deal. ;-)

>> So that gives us, very approximately,
>>
>> - C64 = 1.0 MHz / 3 = 0.333 MIPS.
>> - ZX Spectrum = 3.5 MHz / 4 = 0.875 MIPS.
> 
> please don't use 3 significant digits.

But my very next statement is

>> So each is giving us probably a few hundred thousand complete opcodes 
>> executed every second.

;-)

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_instructions_per_second

Ah. Now this looks like the kind of data I'm after...

-- 
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