There are a number of factors that decide the performance of a processor. However, some important factors are listed hereunder. You can use them as a guide in determining the performance of processors.

• Clock speed: the number of cycles (clock 'ticks') per second the processor operates. An instruction normally requires several cycles, the faster the clock speed the more instructions executed per second (the MIPS rate); just one factor in overall performance; 8086 processors run at 0.25 MIPS - Pentium processors at over 100 MIPS

• Memory (system) bus speed: as important as processor speed - the processor spends a large amount of time 'waiting' the faster the system bus the shorter the waits

• Integer and Floating Point performance: a measure of number processing efficiency; mainly integer processing is measured because intensive floating point calculations are unusual; floating point performance is measured in megaFLOPS (MFlOPS). A megaFLOP is one million floatingpoint operations per second

• Benchmark: a set of test that reflect real-world usage; give a Prating - based mainly on integer performance