>> You're probably right about that. (Just moving 8 bytes around has to 
>> take a minimum of 8 instructions, before you *do* anything to those 
>> bytes.) Just wanted to make it a like-for-like comparison. ;-)
> 
>   Actually the Z80 has 16-bit registers, 16-bit memory addressing and
> a 16-bit ALU (don't believe wikipedia's lies about calling the Z80 an
> "8-bit processor"). But anyways.

OK. Well I was actually thinking more about the 6502. I don't know much 
about the Z80...

>> Floating-point operations per second. Does it matter *how* it does them? 
>> Surely the important point is how many of 'em it can do.
> 
>   I think it becomes a bit fuzzy if it's done in software, because then
> it becomes a question of how optimized that software is.

Well OK. But you would have thought that various "best case" numbers 
wouldn't differ by huge factors. (Now, if you wanted a *precise* 
number... no, that would be rather arbitrary.)

>> Interesting. I was under the impression that processors such as the 
>> Pentium can execute multiple instructions in parallel, and therefore 
>> several instructions can reach the "completed" stage in a single given 
>> clock cycle, but that each individual instruction still takes multiple 
>> cycles from start to finish.
> 
>   When calculating MIPS it doesn't matter how many clock cycles it takes
> for one opcode to be fetched and passed through the entire pipeline and
> executed.

This is true. I was just making a side-comment that I didn't think that 
*any* processor could complete one entire instruction in just 1 clock 
cycle...

>> I'm only trying to figure out "how many zeros" are in the number, if you 
>> see what I mean...
> 
>> Is it 10 MIPS? 100? 1,000? 1,000,000??
> 
>   The wikipedia article about the subject has some numbers.

Apparently, yes. (I'm damn *sure* I checked that article and didn't find 
any numbers... But they're there now.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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