I was reading a Wired article named, “Why Intel’s Processors Aren’t Big on Cellphones,” when I ran into a peeve that always stops me absolutely dead.
“Atom today is not suitable for cellphones,” acknowledges Kedia. “But Moorestown will deliver the same level of performance as today’s Atom but with a 50x reduction in idle power and a 3x reduction in power when you are playing 720p video.”
The author is indulging in the increasingly common technique of using a mathematical operation that increases a number, called multiplication, to show a reduction. Of course this makes no sense, at least when whole-numbers are involved.
A 50 times reduction in idle power? No sense at all. Let’s say the power-hungry Atom processor uses ten watts at idle. I have no idea what the processor really uses, but I’m just choosing a nice even number. Using multiplication, 10 Watts times 50 is 500 Watts. Where’s the savings part again?
See, the problem is that a 1 times reduction in energy use means you’re using no energy at all. If the processor is using 10 Watts, 1 times 10 Watts is 10 Watts. Using 10 Watts less means using 0 Watts. The logical conclusion is that the processor must therefore generate 490 Watts, which is clearly ridiculous.
I’m guessing the author meant that is uses 1/50 (or 2%) the power, which is a far cry from 50 times less.
Shawn
Keep in mind, Journalists are taught in school how to write and are not educated in the things they are writing about. Most have no clue what they are talking about and are definitely not subject experts. Having subject experts write the articles would make sense, but where is the fun in that?
sethra
I love it when you talk math. Tres sexy! LOL!
Jonathan
I only partially understood this post… maybe like 50 times of it!
heh