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e-mail to: Evan Morris

apples vs. oranges revisited

a FLOP is a FLoating point OPeration.

"FLOP: FLoating point OPeration: An operation is a computer action which is specified by a single computer instruction or a high level language statement, and a floating point operation is an operation made on a floating point number. The time used for an average FLOP is a measure of a computer's speed (see Megaflop)."

if i built a machine that could sort oranges twice as fast as a machine that could sort apples and oranges, i'd want to emphasize the speed at which it could sort oranges. it only makes sense that way. we're all salesmen in the end, you see. we're all trying to sell what we're capable of producing.

sony is emphasizing that the playstation 3 runs at two teraflops per second, while wagging its finger at the inferior 360 which can only perform one teraflop per second. that's because the cell processor was designed to scream at FLOP calculations. that's what it does. that's what it's designed to do. it's designed to perform FLOP calculations.

when i was eight, my parents gave me a raleigh bmx. it had yellow mag wheels and hand brakes. it thought it was the shit. but, it didn't get me places as efficiently as the raleigh record i got right after fifth grade. my record was great, but it wasn't really good at traveling on anything other than concrete or pavement. the raleigh mt. rainier mountain bike i got when i went to college was pretty goddamn good at everything. yeah, maybe it wasn't as efficient as the ten-speed record, but the rainier sure made up for that inefficiency when i was riding trails.

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