Am 21.08.2018 um 05:26 schrieb dick balaska:

> I'm not complaining ( :) ) but sheesh. Shouldn't intel call this an i6
> or something?  Clearly it is a newer/faster breed than the other boxes
> that have an i5.  It seems that intel is really underselling themselves
> here.

The digit behind the "i" has nothing to do with absolute computing
power, and instead denotes the marketing segment the CPU is designed
for: office/low-end (i3), mid-range (i5), high-end (i7) or
super-high-end (i9). As CPU power increases in general over time, so
does the CPU power in each marketing segment.

You /can/ be reasonably sure that e.g. a brand-spanking-new i7
- does more computations per second
- eats up more Watts per computation
- eats up more dollars per computations per second
than an equally brand-spanking-new i5, but that's about it.

Intel has moved away from trying to convey absolute computing power in
their CPU names; and rightly so, I think, because the performance of
modern CPUs greatly depends on the application to be executed: For some
applications brute integer computing power is key, for others it is
brute floating point computing power, for yet others it is vector
computing power, and for some it is branch prediction; for some the
speed of the cache is key, for others it is the size of the cache, for
yet others it is sequential access RAM performance, and for some it is
random access RAM performance; for some the speed of the individual
cores is key, for others it is the combined speed of the physical cores,
and some benefit from hyperthreading while others don't. There's so much
you can optimize in a modern CPU to get better performance for /some/
applications that the idea of naming CPUs according to their performance
is moot these days.

Not to mention that pure computing speed has long ceased to be
everything that matters in comparing CPUs. Fiscal efficiency - i.e. how
many computations per second you get per buck - has probably been a
factor as long as computers exist, and energy efficiency - i.e. how many
computations you get per Watt - is becoming ever more important.

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