A quick and dirty CPU benchmarking in python

speedtest.py

from hashlib import md5
from multiprocessing import Pool
from time import time

"""
A quick and dirty CPU benchmarking in python
Calculates md5 for a text multiple times in
multiple processes to push CPU to its limits.
"""

def digest(n):
    """
    create a md5 hexdigest for abracadabra
    """
    string = "abracadabra"
    for x in xrange(1,n):
        string = md5(string).hexdigest()

def benchmark():
    """
    Create a multiprocessing.Pool for creating the digest
    in multiple processes to fully blow out all the CPUs available.
    32 processes, 100 times digest for 100,000 loops.
    """
    start = time()
    number_of_processes = 32
    pool = Pool(number_of_processes)
    pool.map(digest, ([100000] * 100))
    end = time()
    print "Time took in seconds (lower the better): %s (%.2f x)" % (str(end - start), (6.2/(end-start)))
    print "It took 6.2 sec on a MacBook Pro (Early 2015, 2.9GHz i5, 16GB)"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    benchmark()