Dhrystone

Dhrystone is a benchmark invented by Reinhold P. Weicker that tests the integer performance of a CPU and the optimisation capabilities of the compiler used to generate the code.

The output from the benchmark is the number of Dhrystones per second (the number of iterations of the main code loop per second).

One common representation of the Dhrystone benchmark is the DMIP - Dhrystone MIPS - obtained when the Dhrystone score is divided by 1,857 (the number of Dhrystones per second obtained on the VAX 11/785, a 1 MIPS machine).

Dhrystone was named as a pun on the Whetstone benchmark.

Like most synthetic benchmarks, the Dhrystone benchmark is not particularly useful in measuring the performance of real-world computer systems and has fallen into disuse, replaced by benchmarks that more closely resemble typical actual usage.

References:

• Newsgroup posting for calculation of DMIPS http://groups.google.com/groups?q=DMIPS&hl=en&group=comp.benchmarks&rnum=1&selm=tsengDKq856.Gy6%40netcom.com
• comp.benchmarks FAQ