MIPS

[abbreviation]

1. A measure of computing speed; formally, `Million Instructions Per Second' (that's 10^6 per second, not 2^20!); often rendered by hackers as `Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed' or in other unflattering ways, such as `Meaningless Information Provided by Salesmen'. This joke expresses an attitude nearly universal among hackers about the value of most {benchmark} claims, said attitude being one of the great cultural divides between hackers and {marketroid}s (see also {BogoMIPS}). The singular is sometimes `1 MIP' even though this is clearly etymologically wrong. See also {KIPS} and {GIPS}.
2. Computers, especially large computers, considered abstractly as sources of {computron}s. "This is just a workstation; the heavy MIPS are hidden in the basement."
3. The corporate name of a particular RISC-chip company, later acquired by SGI.
4. Acronym for `Meaningless Information per Second' (a joke, prob.: from sense 1).

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