I'm currently working on a school project, the issue is to find approximately the speed of a processor. I made a script which gives the time necessary to calculate a big factorial (10000! for instance). This time (gived by the function time()) is the total CPU time needed to calculate this factorial. But know, I need to know the total number of processor cycle per instruction (CPI) necessary to calculate the factorial. I explain : maybe you already know that the processor run by cycles which has a link with the frequency of the processor. If i can evaluate the number of processor cycle necessary to make a multiplication or the calculation of a factorial (even if this number is approximate) I would be able to find the speed of my processor.