 For comparison, a 2012-era microprocessor can execute 4 instructions per cycle at 3 GHz, achieving 12 billion instructions per second, one million times faster.Its master clock ran at 2.048 MHz, but operations were performed bit-serially, with 4 cycles required to process each bit, 14 bits per phase, and 3 phases per instruction, for a basic time of 168 cycles = 82 μs for a simple add.