[Cryptography] Computing the speed of a cipher or hash

[Pierre Abbat]

Speeds of ciphers and hash functions are expressed in cycles per byte. I can 
measure the time it takes to process many bytes with the @time macro, but how 
do I convert that to cycles? I can look at /proc/cpuinfo while the code is 
running, but it shows that some cores are running much faster than others, and 
the clock speed varies:

$ grep MHz /proc/cpuinfo 
cpu MHz         : 1010.306
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 5507.770
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.245
cpu MHz         : 1091.559
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 1349.525
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 851.999
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000

Pierre
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