Provided that many tools for computers benchmarking are available already, I'd like to write my own, starting with processing power measurement.

I'd like to write it in C under Linux, but other language alternatives are welcome.

I thought starting from floating point operations per second, but it is just a hint.

I also thought it'd be correct to keep track of CPU number of cores, RAM amount and the like, to more consistently associate results with CPU architecture.

How would you proceed to the task of measuring CPU computing power?

And on top of that: I would worry about a properly minimum workload induced by concurrently running services; is it correct to run benchmarking as a standalone (and possibly avulsed from the OS environment) process?