Alternative unit I like is "how many per second" (when done on single hardware unit, one after another, of course). The numbers from there are then easy to gras

Alternative unit I like is "how many per second" (when done on single hardware unit, one after another, of course). The numbers from there are then easy to grasp, since then they relate to what we actually want to achieve (I haven't checked them for truth): In billions: L1 cache reference can be done 2 billion times per second. In millions: Branch mispredict, L2 cache reference, Mutex lock/unlock and Main memory reference can be done 200, 140, 40 and 10 million times per second. In thousands: Compress 1K bytes with Zippy, Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps network, SSD random read, Read 1 MB sequentially from memory, Round trip within same datacenter and Read 1 MB sequentially from SSD* can be done 300, 50, 7, 4, 2 and 1 thousand times per second. And finally, Disk seek, Read 1 MB sequentially from disk and Send packet CA->Netherlands->CA can be done 100, 50 and 7 times per second. No graphs needed, or trying to figure out is a microsecond much or not.