GFlops, G-hours, and CPU hours |
GridRepublic statistics in charts and tables are reported in three kinds of units. This article explains the units in general terms. A more technical explanation is available here.
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Flops, GFlops, and TFlops
FLOPS is a standard measure of computing power -- "Floating Point Operations Per Second". A GigaFlop (or Gflop) is a billion FLOPS. A TeraFlps (or TFlop) is a trillion FLOPS.
So a 1 FLOP machine will do one "operation" in a second. A 1 GFlop machine will do a billion operations in a second. A 2 GFlop machine will do two billion operations in a second. ie, by this measure, a 2 GFlop machine will do twice as much computing work in the same time as a 1 GFlop machine.
CPU Hours and CPU Years
A CPU is a computer's processor ("Central Processing Unit").
The term CPU Hours (processor hours) is used to indicate the amount of time the processor has dedicated to work on your projects.
Note that is is not a direct measure of time. Because some computers are faster than others, CPU Hours are reported in terms of a "Reference Machine". That is, An hour of work on a machine twice as fast as the reference machine is credited as Two CPU Hours.
A CPU Year is simply a full year (8760 hours) of CPU time.
Credits
In place of CPU Hours or CPU Years, you will in some places see the term Credits.
One Credit is 1/100 of a day (14.4 minutes) of computing time on a "reference" machine.
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