A Mathematical Theory of Communication
A Mathematical Theory of Communication
Measuring productive computational work
ACM '76 Proceedings of the 1976 annual conference
A performance measurement and system evaluation project plan proposal
ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review
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The paper establishes a definition for the quantity of computation based on information theory concepts. The definition is based on the recognition of a computing device, process or procedure as a set of associated information sources as defined by Shannon. It is then shown that the quantity of computation (computer work) has a mechanical work equivalent. It is shown how this new measure of computation can be used for measurements of computer processes at various levels. The first area of application described is machine-language level performance, the second is high level language (FORTRAN) performance and finally the measure is applied to the process of sorting. It is shown that the quantity of computer work required to sort a set of items is directly proportional to the quantity of disorder in the set of items. The above system of measurement is proposed as a basis for a uniform and universal computer performance measuring system.