... More isn't always better, sometimes it's just more.

Your right. It's called the Megahertz myth I think... or was it the Gigahertz Myth?

The uneducated state of (most?) journalists, reviewers, sales assistants and the general public is such that they appear to know no difference between those terms or any of:

mhz (mHz): milli-Hertz, as in thousandths of a Hertz as in one cycle per thousand seconds;

MHz: Mega-Hertz, million cycles per second;

GHz: Giga-Hertz, a thousand million cycles per second (American Billion);

mbit/s: milli-bits per second or bits per thousand seconds;

kbit/s: kilo-bits per second, a thousand bits per second;

Mbit/s: Mega-bits per second;

MByte: Mega-Bytes, a million bytes, eight million bits;

GByte: Giga-Bytes, a thousand million bytes, or eight thousand million bits;

And so on...


The units for broadband speed, data rate, clock speed, system memory storage, or disk storage seem to be badly confused. The only thing that sticks out is only the number before the units!

Overhearing the bamboozlement of some innocent shoppers by PC shop sales assistants can be gruesome. Then again, the ignorance of some shoppers is just simply painful!


It's an uneducated jungle out there!

Regards,
Martin

I think all SETIzen's know the difference luckily. Me included.

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- Luke.

MByte: Mega-Bytes, a million bytes, eight million bits;

GByte: Giga-Bytes, a thousand million bytes, or eight thousand million bits;
Regards,
Martin

LoL, I would be more cautious with those ;)
Everyone blames HDD manufacturers for similar understanding M/G Byte terms.
Actually MByte = 2^20, GByte=2^30.
Programmers like to live in 2-states world and these terms were established before general public got access to computers ;)

Indeed so, and there is a big difference there when you get into GBytes and TBytes. Programmers and hardware people work in nice neat binary multiples whilst the HDD manufacturers use the smaller x10 multiples so they can advertise 'bigger' numbers... Quite irksome.

Hence, the extra programming effort that has to be done to work around the Marketing confusion... For example, for the GNU *nix utility "dd":

BLOCKS  and  BYTES  may be followed by the following multiplicative suffixes: c =1, w =2, b =512, kB =1000, K =1024,
MB =1000*1000, M =1024*1024, xM =M,
GB =1000*1000*1000, G= 1024*1024*1024, and so on for T, P, E, Z, Y.

And there's worse than that!

All very expensively silly...

Happy crunchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

MByte: Mega-Bytes, a million bytes, eight million bits;

GByte: Giga-Bytes, a thousand million bytes, or eight thousand million bits;

You did not quite make it right, unless You manufacture Hard Drives :)

One MegaByte is 1024 KiloBytes each 1024 Bytes.

or 1,048,576 Bytes.

This is why Your brand new "1 TB Hard Drive" reports only 934 GigaBytes.

Confusing, right? :)

ChrisD


EDIT: This was a fast one. Seems that 3 fellow crunchers beated me to this one.

:)

Happy Crunching.

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I didn't think this thread would have so many legs.LOL
Glad it has sparked at least some thoughts.

Dave

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Meanwhile, AMD has to be much more frugal about silicon area and so is constrained to focus on better overall system design. Whereas the Intel CPUs appear to be very top heavy with lots of FPU and cache resources that are often underutilised, AMD looks to have a much better balance for their designs. That's one of the reasons that AMD have never needed the design complexity and compiler hangups for using hyperthreading. The AMD designs are well balanced in the first place for the most useful tasks.

That was the case until Intel came up with the Core Architecture.
Since then, for desktops, severs & laptops Intel CPUs outperform AMDs offerings, all while using less power.

The one area that AMD did have the lead in was multi-socket systems- the FSB crippled the Intel system when more than 2 CPUs were used. Now that Intel have done away with the FSB that is no longer the case, and given that their Dual Socket Nehalem EX systems outperform existing Intal & AMD Quad socket systems, it's going to be some time before there's any competition in that area.

As for "compiler hangups" for HyperThreading, it's no longer relevant since most CPUs sold now are multi core, and what allows HyperThreading to work is good thread scheduling. That is also what allows mulicore CPUs to perform well also.

When you consider what an abortion the P4 architecture was, it makes even all the more amazing just how good the Core 2 Architecture is. At the moment AMD isn't in the race, for power or performance. The only way they're hanging in there is on price alone.

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Grant
Darwin NT

... At the moment AMD isn't in the race, for power or performance. The only way they're hanging in there is on price alone.

I just hope their $1billion or so hush money from Intel is enough for AMD to jump ahead again. We need something that is nicely new.

I just wonder if Intel got off far too lightly rather than being properly brought to book by the courts in multiple countries... I'll guess that AMD suffered far greater damage than what the payoff gave.

We are all paying for that in various ways for the extra expense and stilted progress...


Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Given the way things have been going for Intel lately, 1 Billion would be petty cash.
AMD & Nvidia have been having problems with their manufacturer- TSMC- due to poor 40nm yields. Intel on the otherhand have had no hiccups with their new manufacturing processes & if anything are ahead of shedule (32nm CPUs already in producion, 22nm not that far away; approx 12months).

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Grant
Darwin NT

At least in the SI units system Mega stands for 10 to the sixth power, Giga for ten to the ninth power, Peta to the twelfth power and so on,
Tullio

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At least in the SI units system Mega stands for 10 to the sixth power, Giga for ten to the ninth power, Peta to the twelfth power and so on,
Tullio

When you speak about GigaWatt, yes, it's 10^9 Watts.
But when one speaks about GigaByte, he (if he not HDD manufacturer of course :D ) means 2^30 bytes. Just keep it in mind, byte is non-SI unit anyway ;)

They invented the term Mebibyte to avoid confusion but it is not widely used
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

And to make things even more confusing (for some people)
The 700MB CD is (700 * 2^20) = 734 003 200 bytes
The 4.7GB DVD is (4.7 * 10^9) = 4 700 000 000 bytes

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

Well, physicists have ten fingers and count by multiples of ten. Computer scientists have only two fingers and count by multiples of two. But even if Byte is not a SI unit, 1 Megabyte is 10^6 Bytes (at least for me).
Tullio

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Well, if they stick with binairy or decimal numbers, I'll get the picture, Octal or hexadecimal, look's more complex and seems to be only used in software-programming or debugging purposes.

AMD doesn't seem to have much problems, with their graphic cards, or they outsourced their (ATI) card's . . .

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Well, if they stick with binary or decimal numbers, I'll get the picture, Octal or hexadecimal, looks more complex and seems to be only used in software-programming or debugging purposes.

No, not more complex. They are just used to assort binary digits in groups of three (octal) or four (hexadecimal) for easier writing (shorter numbers).

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

I don't know what the average prices are in the USA or the rest of Europe, but as a system builder, I find that here in the UK, Intel cpu's/mobo's are a fair bit dearer than the equivalent AMD components.

I don't build cheap budget systems as I find them a right PITA. As stated earlier by Martin, most customers only see the numbers & don't really understand the workings of a computer.

I still feel that AMD made a major mistake in buying out ATI, they should have concentrated on their core business & maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't be in the situation they currently find themselves in.

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They know that K=1000 so 1kg=1000g, 1Kw=1000w, 1 kilometer=1000m etc.

Actually, k=1000 ... 1kW=1000W ;-)

So, you can say K is a "grownup" k (1024 instead of 1000). Sadly, that doesn't work for the other factors (M, G, T...)

Gruß,
Gundolf

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Computer sind nicht alles im Leben. (Kleiner Scherz)

SETI@home classic workunits 3,758
SETI@home classic CPU time 66,520 hours

Two cents worth...

A couple of IT PMs, puffed up in their technical superiority having always retained their programming chops were discussing some bandwidth issues recently.

Says the one to the other "I just don't get it. This thing should be just flying. There's bandwidth galore according to the design. When we do the stress tests however it just sucks!".

"Hmmmm" says the other wise old IT PM. "Have you looked in 'this'?"

"Oh yes - checked that first. Nothing there."

"'This'?"

"Yup."

"Wait. I know....is it 'this'?"

"Nope. Thought of that too."

"I'm stumped."

"Me too."

"Let's look at it again."

"Ahhh. Why does that have a small 'b' and that have a BIG 'B'?"

Uh-huh. You got the picture. Sad but true, but at least the stress test actually was really flying - the unnamed PMs (of which I deny all knowledge) just aren't as observant as they thought they were.

Hey! Happens to the best of us. Remember, I deny all knowledge.

Regards,

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...and to make the situation something more mad, the finder of MAC OS X (beginning with 10.6.x) has the base 10. If you have conected a 1TB-disk, you will see 1000GB in finder for that disk and not 934GB...

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