BogoMips (from "bogus" and MIPS) is an unscientific measurement of CPU speed made by the Linux kernel when it boots, to calibrate an internal busy-loop.[1] An oft-quoted definition of the term is "the number of million times per second a processor can do absolutely nothing."[2][3]
BogoMips is a value that can be used to verify whether the processor in question is in the proper range of similar processors, i.e. BogoMips represents a processor's clock frequency as well as the potentially present CPU cache. It is not usable for performance comparison between different CPUs.[4][5]
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In 1993, Lars Wirzenius posted a mail[6] explaining the reasons for its introduction in the Linux kernel on comp.os.linux:
As a very approximate guide, the BogoMips can be pre-calculated by the following table. The given rating is typical for that CPU with the then current and applicable Linux version. The index is the ratio of "BogoMips per clock speed" for any CPU to the same for an Intel 386DX CPU, for comparison purposes.
| System | Rating | Index |
|---|---|---|
| Intel 8088 | clock × 0.004 | 0.02 |
| Intel/AMD 386SX | clock × 0.14 | 0.8 |
| Intel/AMD 386DX | clock × 0.18 | 1 (definition) |
| Motorola 68030 | clock × 0.25 | 1.4 |
| Cyrix/IBM 486 | clock × 0.34 | 1.8 |
| Intel Pentium | clock × 0.40 | 2.2 |
| Intel 486 | clock × 0.50 | 2.8 |
| AMD 5x86 | clock × 0.50 | 2.8 |
| MIPS R4000/R4400 | clock × 0.50 | 2.8 |
| ARM9 | clock × 0.50 | 2.8 |
| Motorola 8081 | clock × 0.65 | 3.6 |
| Motorola 68040 | clock × 0.67 | 3.7 |
| PowerPC 603 | clock × 0.67 | 3.7 |
| Intel StrongARM | clock × 0.66 | 3.7 |
| NexGen Nx586 | clock × 0.75 | 4.2 |
| PowerPC 601 | clock × 0.84 | 4.7 |
| Alpha 21064/21064A | clock × 0.99 | 5.5 |
| Alpha 21066/21066A | clock × 0.99 | 5.5 |
| Alpha 21164/21164A | clock × 0.99 | 5.5 |
| Intel Pentium Pro | clock × 0.99 | 5.5 |
| Cyrix 5x86/6x86 | clock × 1.00 | 5.6 |
| Intel Pentium II/III | clock × 1.00 | 5.6 |
| AMD K7/Athlon | clock × 1.00 | 5.6 |
| Intel Celeron | clock × 1.00 | 5.6 |
| Intel Itanium | clock × 1.00 | 5.6 |
| R4600 | clock × 1.00 | 5.6 |
| Hitachi SH-4 | clock × 1.00 | 5.6 |
| Intel Itanium 2 | clock × 1.49 | 8.3 |
| Alpha 21264 | clock × 1.99 | 11.1 |
| VIA Centaur | clock × 1.99 | 11.1 |
| AMD K5/K6/K6-2/K6-III | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| AMD Duron/Athlon XP | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| AMD Sempron | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| UltraSparc II | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Intel Pentium MMX | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Intel Pentium 4 | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Intel Pentium M | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Intel Core Duo | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Intel Core 2 Duo | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Intel Atom N455 | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Centaur C6-2 | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| PowerPC 604/604e/750 | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Intel Pentium III Coppermine | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Intel Pentium III Xeon | clock × 2.00 | 11.1 |
| Motorola 68060 | clock × 2.01 | 11.2 |
| Intel Xeon MP (32-bit) (hyper-threading) | clock × 3.97 | 22.1 |
| IBM S390 | not enough data (yet) | |
| ARM | not enough data (yet) |
Source[7]
For a complete list, refer to the BogoMips mini-Howto.
With the 2.2.14 Linux kernel, a caching setting of the CPU state was moved from behind to before the BogoMips calculation. Although the BogoMips algorithm itself wasn't changed, from that kernel onward the BogoMips rating for then current Pentium CPUs was twice that of the rating before the change. The changed BogoMips outcome had no effect on real processor performance.
With current kernel (2.6.x), Bogomips are implemented in /usr/src/linux/init/calibrate.c kernel source file. It computes the Linux kernel timing parameter loops_per_jiffy (see Jiffy (time) ) value. Explanation from source code:
/* * A simple loop like * while ( jiffies < start_jiffies+1) * start = read_current_timer(); * will not do. As we don't really know whether jiffy switch * happened first or timer_value was read first. And some asynchronous * event can happen between these two events introducing errors in lpj. * * So, we do * 1. pre_start <- When we are sure that jiffy switch hasn't happened * 2. check jiffy switch * 3. start <- timer value before or after jiffy switch * 4. post_start <- When we are sure that jiffy switch has happened * * Note, we don't know anything about order of 2 and 3. * Now, by looking at post_start and pre_start difference, we can * check whether any asynchronous event happened or not */
loops_per_jiffy is used to implement udelay (delay in microseconds) and ndelay (delay in nanoseconds) functions. These functions are needed by some drivers to wait for hardware. Note that a busy waiting technique is used, so the kernel is effectively blocked when executing ndelay/udelay functions. For i386 architecture delay_loop is implemented in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/lib/delay.c as:
/* simple loop based delay: */ static void delay_loop(unsigned long loops) { int d0; __asm__ __volatile__( "\tjmp 1f\n" ".align 16\n" "1:\tjmp 2f\n" ".align 16\n" "2:\tdecl %0\n\tjns 2b" :"=&a" (d0) :"0" (loops)); }
which can be rewritten to C-pseudocode
static void delay_loop(long loops) { long d0 = loops; do { --d0; } while (d0 >= 0); }
Full and complete information and details about BogoMips, and hundreds of reference entries can be found in the (unfortunately outdated) BogoMips mini-Howto.[4]
This article includes material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.