The Quintessential Linux Benchmark  When Linux boots, it
displays a “BogoMips” number. What does that mean? Is the number
displayed correct? What use is the infromation? This
quintessential part of Linux is demystified in this article.
Some device drivers in the Linux kernel need timing delays.
Either they need a very short delay, or the delay must be very
accurately determined. A simple non-busy loop cannot do this.
Therefore, Linus Torvalds added a calibration in the boot
procedure to predetermine how often a specific busy-loop
algorithm can be calculated in one second. This predetermined
value, called loops_per_second, is used in the device drivers to
delay for precisely measured times.  For fun, Linus also added a
print statement presenting this predetermined value (divided by
500,000) as BogoMips. Linus apparently loves it when millions of
Linux users are gazing at their computer, baffled by these bogus
MIPS. Note that BogoMips have nothing to do with the million
instructions per second that the name su