A simple Chip8 benchmarking utility.

A simple Chip8 benchmarking utility. Reports an approximation of how many thousand instructions can be performed each second.

Can be compiled with the Octo Chip8 compiler.

Operates by counting how many loops of a benchmark function can be run in 30 frames. Using the assumption that 60 frames is equal to one second of realtime, kOPS (1000s of Operations Per Second) is calculated and displayed. The benchmark function plus loop overhead is designed to be exactly 50 instructions.

Accuracy suffers at slow speeds. For example, at 7 cycles/frame (420 cycles/sec), the loop can only run 4 times before the delay timer elapses during the 5th loop. The counter is large enough to accommodate speeds of at least 100 million operations per second.