My first reaction was to say "it should be based on the number of CPU/GPU/*PU instructions". But then, there are things like this: http://www.norvig.com/spell-correct.html. I wonder how much actual new-ness you can pack into, say, 100 instructions on a modern CPU.
That would be a a silly rule, for better or worse 10 lines of Haskell might perform the computation of 500 line of Java (even if they took you the same amount of time to write.. heh).
