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They are clearly wrong. The purpose of higher clock rates is to produce a given answer in a smaller amount of time (latency). The purpose of adding more processors (cores) is to produce more answers in a given time (throughput). They are free to report their results using any standard measurement of throughput. Their answer is weasely.

But then, clock rate is irrelevant to latency and throughput. Really matters how much more work per cycle you get done, how fast you can move IO, and the cost of throughput per watt (and whether the system can meet your requirements at all).



They are "clearly wrong" when talking to geeks about specific types of problems. For most most people this means nothing, and multiplying it is fine. And for a lot of situations where you are considering batch jobs, multiplying it is fine as a quick illustration. It is not as if the raw numbers tell you anything anyway, since the characteristics of the system are so unusual.

They miscalculated how people would interpret it, and got burned. But they've been clear about what it is they actually mean the whole time.




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