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MIPS /mips/ n.
[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; among other things, they designed the processor chips used in [DEC]'s 3100 workstation series. 4. Acronym for `Meaningless Information per Second' (a joke, prob. from sense 1).
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