It is developed in conjunction with the HINT benchmark program. It defines the quality of the solution as a user's final goal. The quality is rigorously defined on the basis of the mathematical characteristics of the problem being solved. Dividing the measure of solution quality by the time taken to achieve that level of quality produces QUIPS. It has several of the characteristics of a good performance metric. The mathematically precise definition of quality for the defined problem makes this metric insensitive to outside influences (characteristic 6) and entirely self-consistent when it is ported to different machines (characteristic 5).