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I have a hard time finding the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) computing power. I'm not speaking about the Ethereum Network Hash Rate which secure the block, but the EVM.

Smart contracts are executed on the EVM. As every full node processes every transaction, does that mean that the EVM is constrained to the node with the smallest computer power?

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EVM is constrained to the node with the smallest computer power?

All EVM executions are constrained by gas given to the transaction.

EVM is constrained to the node with the smallest computer power?

If a node cannot execute transactions fast enough, it cannot keep up with the network and falls out of sync. Other more powerful nodes do not care.

Miners who decide the Ethereum blocks also decide what transactions go to the blocks they produce. They can exclude transactions, like too long-running ones from their blocks if they want. So nobody is going to mine your transaction if it has an infinite loop or uses too much gas.

In practice, any transaction will be executed if you pay high enough gas price and as long as the transaction gas limit is below the block gas limit.

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  • The gas cost per instruction is set by the protocol and depend of the type of instruction. Simple instruction such as ADD cost 3 gas unit more complex can be much more. The bloc gas limit is voted by the nodes is today at ~12'500'000 according to ethstats.net. Their is a block every 12 seconds. Max ADD Operation per seconds = 12500000/3/12 = 347'222 about 350'000 IPS. ETH EVM is at 0,350 MIPS (million instructions per seconds) Rabery PI 2 is at 4'744 MIPS (million instructions per seconds) at 1.0 GHz
    – gagarine
    Mar 19, 2021 at 16:18
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EVM is an interpreter (of a EVM-compatible bytecode). With a bit of imagination, you could compare some of its features (such as the interpretation) to features of a Java Virtual Machine. It doesn't have a CPU that you could use to calculate the computing power.

Edit for clarification: Each EVM instance uses the computing power of its host.

To answer your question:

As every full node processes every transaction, does that mean that the EVM is constrained to the node with the smallest computer power?

I think you're imagining the EVM as some network-connected one supercomputer. But it's really not. The Ethereum network doesn't wait for the last currently active full node to validate the block. It's the other way around - if a validator finds an invalid transaction (using their local instance of EVM), they proactively broadcast this information.

So the simple answer is: No, the EVM is not constrained to the node with the smallest computer power.

Note: The original question before edit was asking about computing power in megaflop

One more small inaccuracy: Flops are based on floating-point numbers. EVM doesn't support floats, so from this angle, it's also impossible to calculate the computing power in flops.

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