How many asm-instructions per C-instruction?

Question

I realize that this question is impossible to answer absolutely, but I'm only after ballpark figures:

Given a reasonably sized C-program (thousands of lines of code), on average, how many ASM-instructions would be generated. In other words, what's a realistic C-to-ASM instruction ratio? Feel free to make assumptions, such as 'with current x86 architectures'.

I tried to Google about this, but I couldn't find anything.

Addendum: noticing how much confusion this question brought, I feel some need for an explanation: What I wanted to know by this answer, is to know, in practical terms, what "3GHz" means. I am fully aware of that the throughput per Herz varies tremendously depending on the architecture, your hardware, caches, bus speeds, and the position of the moon.

I am not after a precise and scientific answer, but rather an empirical answer that could be put into fathomable scales.

This isn't a trivial answer to place (as I became to notice), and this was my best effort at it. I know that the amount of resulting lines of ASM per lines of C varies depending on what you are doing. i++ is not in the same neighborhood as sqrt(23.1) - I know this. Additionally, no matter what ASM I get out of the C, the ASM is interpreted into various sets of microcode within the processor, which, again, depends on whether you are running AMD, Intel or something else, and their respective generations. I'm aware of this aswell.

The ballpark answers I've got so far are what I have been after: A project large enough averages at about 2 lines of x86 ASM per 1 line of ANSI-C. Today's processors probably would average at about one ASM command per clock cycle, once the pipelines are filled, and given a sample big enough.

Answer 1

There is no answer possible. statements like int a; might require zero asm lines. while statements like a = call_is_inlined(); might require 20+ asm lines.

You can see yourself by compiling a c program, and then starting objdump -Sd ./a.out . It will display asm and C code intermixed, so you can see how many asm lines are generated for one C line. Example:

test.c

int get_int(int c);
int main(void) {
    int a = 1, b = 2;
    return getCode(a) + b;
}

$ gcc -c -g test.c

$ objdump -Sd ./test.o

00000000 <main>:
int get_int(int c);
int main(void) { /* here, the prologue creates the frame for main */
   0:   8d 4c 24 04             lea    0x4(%esp),%ecx
   4:   83 e4 f0                and    $0xfffffff0,%esp
   7:   ff 71 fc                pushl  -0x4(%ecx)
   a:   55                      push   %ebp
   b:   89 e5                   mov    %esp,%ebp
   d:   51                      push   %ecx
   e:   83 ec 14                sub    $0x14,%esp
    int a = 1, b = 2; /* setting up space for locals */
  11:   c7 45 f4 01 00 00 00    movl   $0x1,-0xc(%ebp)
  18:   c7 45 f8 02 00 00 00    movl   $0x2,-0x8(%ebp)
    return getCode(a) + b;
  1f:   8b 45 f4                mov    -0xc(%ebp),%eax
  22:   89 04 24                mov    %eax,(%esp)
  25:   e8 fc ff ff ff          call   26 <main+0x26>
  2a:   03 45 f8                add    -0x8(%ebp),%eax
} /* the epilogue runs, returning to the previous frame */
  2d:   83 c4 14                add    $0x14,%esp
  30:   59                      pop    %ecx
  31:   5d                      pop    %ebp
  32:   8d 61 fc                lea    -0x4(%ecx),%esp
  35:   c3                      ret