Android Emulator Speed

Some posts in Android forums have risen the question: how fast is the emulator compared with a real device ?
Honestly, I don't know. Because if you believe that there's no real devices to test out there, not even at MIT, nobody should know.
But we can investigate how the emulator is configured and how fast its CPU is.

Here is the emulator CPU configuration

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : ARM926EJ-S rev 5 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 444.00
Features : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp java
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 5TEJ
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0x926
CPU revision : 5
Cache type : write-through
Cache clean : not required
Cache lockdown : not supported
Cache format : Harvard
I size : 4096
I assoc : 4
I line length : 32
I sets : 32
D size : 65536
D assoc : 4
D line length : 32
D sets : 512

Hardware : Goldfish
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000

So far, so good. The emulated ARM926EJ-S rev 5 (v5l) is running at 444 bogomips.
What's a bogomip you may wonder. Well according to the Unix Guide, BogoMips is a combination of Bogus and Mips. MIPS stands for (depending on who you ask) Millions of Instructions per Second, or Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed.

For a meaningful comparison, my laptop having Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5600 @ 1.83GHz, two cores, gives a total of 7319.

If you are running Linux and intrested in obtaining this in your box, just run

$ awk '/bogomips/ {b+=$3} END {print b}' /proc/cpuinfo