Special purpose devices such as music players, cell phones, and global positioning system (GPS) receivers contain processors similar to those used in computers, but these processors are designed to perform a single function. Computers are programmable, and the size and complexity of the functions they can perform depend on the speed by which the processor executes the instructions.
One measure of a computer's performance capacity is the clock speed. Operations in most computers are carried out in steps, one instruction at a time, synchronized by a clock. Clock speed or rate is usually given in hertz, which equals one cycle per second, or in multiples of hertz such as a gigahertz, which equals a billion hertz. For example, I am typing this sentence with a program running on a 3.0 gigahertz computer, which means that the computer can perform 3 billion steps per second. Although this measurement is useful to compare the speed of similar processors, the configuration of a processor is also critical in how fast it can operate. Some processors can do more than others at a given clock rate, which makes comparisons based solely on this number potentially misleading.
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Another measure of a computer's speed is its floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). A floating-point is a method of representing real numbers digitally, and operations with these numbers are common in many calculations, particularly scientific ones. Other measures of speed are also used, such as instructions per second (usually identified as millions of instructions per second, or MIPS). None of these measurements can fully characterize the speed of a computer, since factors such as the efficiency of the memory, input and output devices, and other components are critical to the computer's overall performance. But FLOPS and similar speed rates are often used to compare the fastest computers, which are commonly employed in scientific research.
The Measure of Computer's Speed
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