Chipmakers Admit Your Power May Vary

Dylan Knight Rogers writes to mention a News.com story discussing the realities of chip power consumption. From the article: "Assessing only pure performance is passe. The debate these days is about performance-per-watt, which seems like it should be a simple miles-per-gallon type of calculation. However, miles are miles, and gallons are gallons. There's no one simple way to measure processor performance, and measuring the amount of power output by today's chips is proving just as difficult."

Comments

Re:It's not just the CPU

[Burning1]

As a resource becomes more plentiful, uses for that resource also increase. A similar example from automotive engineering comes to mind:

Because of advances in engineering and design, engines are far more powerful and efficient now than they were in the early 90s. Cars have far better aerodynamics. However, gas mileage has not improved. In many cases it's gotten worse since the 80s. Likewise 0-60 times haven't improved much.

So what happened? Instead of improving the performance of your average family sedan, auto makers have added better armor, more air vents, more lights, DVD players, and more plush materials. Everything is safer and more comfortable now than it was in the 80s and 90s.

My 86 Camry will beat your 2007 Camry in a drag race and it will get better fuel mileage. But for a 500 mile trek across California or a bad accident? I know which one I'd prefer.

Likewise, my Pentium 4 has 16000 times more ram than my first computer (a C64,) and 256 times the ram of my first 486 (side note: how long before someone informs me of the amount of ram my 486 had?)

My 486 could write a document just as easily and with as much style as my P4. But it couldn't write a document while I was watching a subtitled MP4 movie in another window, listening to music, burning a DVD, and downloading hot lesbian pr0n from bit torrent. And it certainly couldn't do all that on dual 20 inch widescreen flat panel displays.

Sure, software is more bloated. But like the 2007 Camry (available wherever fine cars are sold,) after a long day your ass is going to be a lot more comfortable.