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Post the best analogy of why MHz is MHz is MHz is simply not true

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barton2500 said:
Here's my analogy:

CPU A can do 4 calcuations / cycle at 100 cycles per second = 400 calculations / second
CPU B can do 3 calcuations / cycle at 133.3 cycles per second = 400 calcuations / second

MHz is just how many cycles per second...

Joe said two things:
1. Yes but the other one's got more megahertz.
and
2. Bicycles, what?
 
Not exactly an analogy that Barton!
Two guys cutting up wood
One is 175 pounds the other 200+ pounds, the lighter guy although he cant hit as hard as the heavier guy can chop faster and hence does more work than the heavier guy who is slightly slower. As the heavier guy hits harder and his work rate is slower they both finish cutting the wood at roughly the same time.
 
By comparing 2.2 GHz 3200+ to a three times cheaper 2.3 GHz Celeron.
Come on.
You'll need like a 4 gig Celeron to catch up.
 
How about an old 70s washing machine spinning faster with cheap detergent
vs.
a 2004 washing machine spinning slower with the best detergent?
 
c627627 said:


Ah yes :).
Anyway, it's because you're going to be met with blank stares by the people who say "...but this one has more m'gahurtz"

Would you seriously respond to a question posed to you in that way with the kind of talk we use at the forums? Have you met any of the majority of the ig'nant and illiterate population of any country in the world?
I have met many people who are ignorrant of many things. I really stopped trying to talk to them about things I know and they don't. I mostly try to learn what they know, as my knowledge is confined to a rather small area. If I were to explain it, yes I might start with an analogy. But Iwould make all sorts of disclaimers, and ten try to explain how it actually works. An analogy can be a usefull tool to promote acceptance of an idea, but it can also cloud true understanding.

As for mine, a Hz is just a measure of 1/s, so why not use a time analogy? Imagine that I have two clocks by my bed. They are both traveling at a velocity of 0m/s relative to each other. One of the clocks runs fast. If I let a set amount of time go by (let's say an hour) and look at the clocks, one may say that an hour has passed, and the other that an hour and a half has passed. Should I be excied that so many more seconds go by on the fast clock? Or should I be excited that the slow clock does more time with each second than the fast clock?

And if the person you are talking to wasn't confused before, the will be after you use that...
 
Ha-ha. Nice. :D

Gnufsh helped me many times in the past and I thank him for that.

Looking to avoid Einstein's Theory of Relativity for this one though.
 
i would also revert to cars.

these numbers will be incorrect for simplicity reasons but say you have a 4 cylinder motor and an 8 cylinder motor. the 4 cylinder motor will make 4 power strokes every 2 revolutions while the 8 cylinder motor makes 8. while the 4 cylinder is a smaller motor capable of more RPMS it doesn't make the same power. in fact it needs to nearly double in RPMS to do the same work as the 8 cylinder.

putting this analogy to AMD vs. Intel you have AMD as the 8 cylinder and intel as the 4 cylinder. the 8 cylinder can get more work done per Mhz/RPM in comparison to the intel. on the other hand the intel is capable of more Mhz. which is to say it can rev to much higher speeds to make up for it's loss of power per Mhz. in order for intel to be faster than the AMD it has to make more Mhz or RPMs to do the same work.

this analogy can be proven true buy comparing torque rating at a given RPM between two motors. the 8 cylinder will make much more torque ( a true way of measuring power) then the 4 cylinder at the same rpm.
 
Just say megahertz is a frequency - how often an operation is performed.

And say AMD and Intel are shovelling snow.
AMD has a big shovel and Intel has a small shovel.

It takes AMD 10 scoops to finish the job, and it takes intel 14 scoops to finish, but they finish at the same time since Intel does it more frequently in the same given time.
 
posted by c627627

It's like A vs B.
B xxx faster but you get more xxx with A.

My analogy is horribly innacurate when actually compared to the way the different processors really work, but so are most of the above anyways. It is a bit longer than your "It's like A vs. B" ideal, but I strongly feel it gets the message across to our gas-station friend; "Average Joe Sixpack".

Here goes:

It's like a big heavy guy with long arms, vs. a small and light guy with short arms. They both are trying to climb a tall tree with lots of branches, to get at the beer/television which is at the top of the tree. The beer is good, strong, and Canadian, and the hockey game is on the television.

(pause in a corny fashion as if you've just said something funny, so the audience can take a moment to think about what you've said, and laugh appreciatively at the mention of good Canadian beer, and television, and realize the very grave need to see as much of that hocky game as possible)

The big heavy guy with long arms doesn't have to haul himself up as many of the tree branches the small light guy with short arms must haul himself up, because he can reach past them. But it takes him longer to haul himself up each branch, because he weighs a hell of a lot.

(pause as if you've just said something funny, so the audience can laugh or something, tricking them into thinking that they're enjoying the 'story')

The small, llight guy with short arms must haul himself up a lot of branches, becuase he cannot reach past them, but hauls himself up a whole lot faster because he doesn't weigh much at all.

The light guy, and the heavy guy reach the top at the same time, just in time for the beginning of the game, and a nice cold beer.


The logic of this analogy is terrible if you think about it for a minute or two (mainly because the heavy guy needs to haul himself just as far as the light guy, never mind the number of branches), but the target audience won't think about it for a minute or two, and will hopefully accept it as truth. You can hasten this blind acceptance by cracking out a 2-4 of Creemore.
 
Dude sounds like a total dumbass... like my friends!


I would explain it in terms of drunkness.


You drink a 12 pack of Miller High Life to get drunk. Your buddy drinks a 6 pack of Guinness (or Milwakee's Best Ice if he's a redneck) and gets just as drunk because it has twice the alc of the Miller.

You see its got more power per mhz, like Guinness has more alc (or drunkability) per can.

He should understand that unless he doesn't drink, but he sounds like he's killed more then a few brain cells with beer.
 
Yeah, water is good.

AMD has bigger cups than Intel, so if it only takes 10 cups to fill the bucket, Intel needs 14 cups to fill the bucket, but Intel dumps the water in the bucket a bit quicker since it uses smaller cups.

In the end, they take the same amount of time to fill the bucket, but Intel has to dump water into the bucket more frequently to keep up with AMD since Intel is using smaller cups.
 
Yes! Since we're talking about explaining MHz to someone with no computer knowledge, I think the simplest story so far is

"filling the bucket with water using a small cup vs. using a large cup".

Thank you for that, we'll see if anyone posts a better comparison.
 
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Frequency relates to how many cycles are done in a given time.
60hz equals 60 cycles in 1 second an so on 500mhz = 500,000,000 cycles in one second.
Each clock cycle is the execution of one step of assembly language instruction.
hz baseline unit 1
khz=1000 hertz
mhz= 1 million hertz
ghz= 1 billion hertz
 
NewbiePerson said:
Frequency relates to how many cycles are done in a given time.
60hz equals 60 cycles in 1 second an so on 500mhz = 500,000,000 cycles in one second.
Each clock cycle is the execution of one step of assembly language instruction.
hz baseline unit 1
khz=1000 hertz
mhz= 1 million hertz
ghz= 1 billion hertz

[stereotype] Explain that to a blonde chick [/stereotype]
 
borg said:
have no anology, but can u (gnufsh) post some links to tutorials/articles explaining how the pipeline/branch predicition/cpu generally in-depth works? would be *very* grateful...

to stay a bit ontopic... isn't MIPS or FLOPS better cpu power indicator than Mhz? why isn't it displayed?

arstechnica.com has some good articles about this, they had an understanding the microprocessor series that delt with things like pipelining, superscalar execution, bandwidth and latentcy. I'll just post some links to the articles.
caching: http://arstechnica.com/paedia/c/caching/caching-1.html
multi-threading: http://arstechnica.com/paedia/h/hyperthreading/hyperthreading-1.html
bandwidth/latency: http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/b/bandwidth-latency/bandwidth-latency-1.html
Understanding the microprocessor: http://arstechnica.com/paedia/c/cpu/part-1/cpu1-1.html
pipelining/superscalar execution: http://arstechnica.com/paedia/c/cpu/part-2/cpu2-1.html

and just for fun Moore's law: http://arstechnica.com/paedia/m/moore/moore-1.html

THe ars article comparing the G4 and P4 talks about work per cycle I think, but I haven't read it in a long time:
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q2/p4andg4e/p4andg4e-1.html
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q4/p4andg4e2/p4andg4e2-1.html

Most of the other cpu theory and praxis articles are very good.

If you go to aceshardware.com and click on the cpu arch & tech link, you can find some very nice articles on the differences and performance of various cpus (some of the older articles from when the P4 first cam out are very interesting.

http://www.chip-architect.com/ has some very in-depth exploration of the architectures of different chips.

I'm sure there are other places, but these are just the ones off the top of my head.
 
Here is my analogy..a little more refined

Andrew(Athlon) can add 4 numbers at a time, and can do 100 additions in an hour. So altogether he adds 400 numbers in an hour.
Peter(Pentium4) can add 3 numbers at a time, but can do 133 aditions in an hour. So he can add 400 numbers in the same amount of time as Andrew, even though he does more additions(MHz) in an hour.

I think the analogy of water buckets is the best so far. :)
 
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