Instructions Per Second

Instructions Per Second

Instructions per second (IPS) is a measure of a computer's processor speed. Many reported IPS values have represented "peak" execution rates on artificial instruction sequences with few branches, whereas realistic workloads typically lead to significantly lower IPS values. The performance of the memory hierarchy also greatly affects processor performance, an issue barely considered in MIPS calculations. Because of these problems, researchers created standardized tests such as SPECint to attempt to measure the real effective performance in commonly used applications, and raw IPS has fallen into disuse.

The term is commonly used in association with a numeric value such as thousand instructions per second (kIPS), million instructions per second (MIPS), Giga instructions per second (GIPS), or Million Operations per Second (MOPS).