The core i7 can issue 4 instructions, and execute 6 micro-ops per cycle. As long as your code is not a single huge dependency chain, you are mostly reading data

The core i7 can issue 4 instructions, and execute 6 micro-ops per cycle. As long as your code is not a single huge dependency chain, you are mostly reading data out of L1 cache, and you don't use complex instructions like division, you can expect to get at least 2 instructions per clock. I have profiled real code (crypto stuff) that got a tad bit over 3 instructions per cycle. That's 10 billion instructions a second on the processor it ran on. Most instructions have not taken over 2 cycles on x86 since P4. This is a mesofact, update your worldview. :)