jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA.UUCP (10/04/87)
Aha! I *KNEW* somebody would do it. Dave Haynie writes: >>MIPS -> Million Instructions Per Second. Sounds clear, right? Think again. >> ...and you've got yourself a sustained 1 MIP machine.. A 1 MIP machine? A machine that does one Million Instructions Per? Per what? Does it just stop after a million instructions, roll over and beg for warranty service? The "S" in MIPS stands for "Second", not a plural! It's a 1 MIPS machine, not a 1 MIP machine if you mean 1 Million Instructions Per Second! A linguist would say Mr. Haynie had produced what is called a "back formation" in instinctively using "MIP" as the singular of the obviously plural "MIPS". Sorry to pick on you, Dave, but yours was the first note I could pick on, because the previous ones seemed (to my amazement) to avoid this very common error. -John Sangster / jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa P.S. In my next nitpick, I will comment on the phenomenon of "Is Doubling" that I am hearing more and more these days, as in "The thing is, is that..."