Cycle per second Cycle per second The cycle per second was a once-common English name for the unit of frequency now known as the hertz (Hz). The plural form was typically used, often written cycles per second, cycles/second, c.p.s., c/s, ~, or, ambiguously, just cycles. The term comes from the fact that sound waves have a frequency measurable in their number of oscillations, or "cycles", per second. With the organization of the International System of Units in 1960, the cycle per second was officially replaced by the hertz, or reciprocal second, "s" or "1/s". Symbolically, "cycle per second" units are "cycle/second", while hertz
Cycles per instruction instructions in the five pipeline stages at once (one instruction per stage), a different instruction would complete stage 5 in every clock cycle and on average the number of clock cycles it takes to execute an instruction is 1 (CPI = 1). In this case, the processor is said to be "scalar". With a single-execution-unit processor, the best CPI attainable is 1. However, with a multiple-execution-unit processor, one may achieve even better CPI values (CPI < 1). In this case, the processor is said to be "superscalar". To get better CPI values without pipelining, the number of execution units must