WhiteCrane

True or false: the faster a computer can calculate long division problems, the higher the overall performance.

This is a question on my take-home test and the professor never went over this as well as I am having a horrible time finding the answer. Thanks.

korosu

There are a lot of factors that can determine a system's overall performance. But yeah, I'd say long division would do it.

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h33b

Well I would think faster = more performance. I mean, there are other factors when determining overall system performance, but for pure mathematics, faster would be better.

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TheLegend

A better measure would be floating point calculations which were decisive between AMD and Intel for a number of years.

To answer your question would be yes. SuperPi, if you haven't heard of it, is a program which calculates PI to various decimal places. The faster the system the better overall score with regard to time.

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Speedma11229

that logic makes sense

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rabidgnome229

Long division would use the integer functional units, which is more reflective of real world performance. Floating point is slower and less common in real code.

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Scriptorum

How is "overall performance" measured? The measurement used determines the level of performance using that metric. You can come up with a number of different tests that people would subjectively call an overall performance metric, and show results where the system with a faster long-division calculation has worse performance on the overall metric. The answer is "not necessarily" and therefore false.

I don't consider this a good question, because it really is asking you to guess at the instructor's assumptions. All things remaining equal, this statement is true. In general, given two "comparable systems", the statement is also true (which means not always, but usually true). But since he hasn't stated his assumptions, you have to ask yourself is he a detail-oriented kind of guy, or does he like generalizations?

The faster a computer can calculate long division problems, the higher the overall performance of long division calculation. Now THAT'S true.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
- Mark Twain et al

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