На ArsTechnica статья Behind the benchmarks: SPEC, GFLOPS, MIPS et al,
посвященная различным способам оценки производительности вычислительных систем.
'For example, the "Hello World" program, when compiled for a CISC ISA, might use ten instructions; when compiled for a RISC ISA, it might use twenty. If the program takes the same amount of time to execute on both CPUs, the RISC chip will have MIPS rating twice as high as the CISC chip...'