Computer operations per second - Question.

[Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com>]

I have just completed writing a very strong cryptographic cipher in Ada-95 and I need to try and analyise the time complexity of this cipher i.e the time taken to test a key space of 2560, 000,000,000,000 keys at say ‘n’ operations per second.

The processor of my home computer is a 2.61 GHz AMD processor and it has 2.87 Gb of RAM.

Is it correct for me say that my computer has a capability of 2.61 Giga operations per second i.e ‘n’ = 2.61 x 10^6?

I know this question is hardly related to Ada programming but I know also that many Ada programmer readers are well-informed computer scientists.


Can I assume that an operation is performed every cycle of the computer clock at 2.61 x10^6 operations persecond 

It seems a bit naïve to say that ‘n’ is dependent only on the processor frequency? 

Anybody please?

- adacrypt