3 ms·

It's okay for a unit to have multiple "per second"s in it. A/ns is simply a measure of how fast the current ramps up or down.

danbruc 4y ago
Sure, but that's besides the point. The article talks about the peak current, why would you want to talk about the current gradient here? Not that the current gradient can not be important, it will determine how quickly the processor can change the clock frequency, but this seems to just be the same confusion that often happens between energy and power. EDIT: Just out of curiosity I looked up what voltage regulator slew rates for modern processors are, and it seems to be on the order of 100 A/µs, in case someone is interested.
- eightysixfour 4y ago
  It isn’t besides the point, it is like saying a car can do 250mph, but can only do it for 1 second before the tires explode. A CPU that can hit 6ghz while pulling 400amps but can only do that for a few milliseconds before throttling itself is not particularly impressive.
  - danbruc 4y ago
    Look at the original comment again, they address this very point. They forgot to say for how many microseconds can the chip sustain this speed. This is exactly what you are saying, they are asking how long can it run at 6 GHz before they have to throttle. Then they continue with the sentence I originally responded to. And 400 A ? Per nanosecond or what ? I see mainly two possibilities. The first one is that they made a typo and what they actually wanted to write is »And 400 A? For one nanosecond or what?« which would essentially be repeating the exact same question as in the sentence before, just in terms of current instead of clock frequency. But this is not what they wrote, they wrote »And 400 A? Per nanosecond or what?« which leads to the second possibility and the one I consider more likely. They were confused about the unit, the equivalent of responding to »The average US citizen consumes 10 kW of power.« with the question »Per day? Per month? Per year? In its lifetime?« which obviously makes no sense. That would be an appropriate response to the statement »The average US citizen consumes 89 MWh of energy.« Without the author telling us, we will never know for sure, but I find it more likely that they were confused about the unit than that they repeated the exact same questions twice and made a typo in the second one that just makes it look like they were confused about the unit.

danbruc 4y ago

Sure, but that's besides the point. The article talks about the peak current, why would you want to talk about the current gradient here? Not that the current gradient can not be important, it will determine how quickly the processor can change the clock frequency, but this seems to just be the same confusion that often happens between energy and power. EDIT: Just out of curiosity I looked up what voltage regulator slew rates for modern processors are, and it seems to be on the order of 100 A/µs, in case someone is interested.

eightysixfour 4y ago
It isn’t besides the point, it is like saying a car can do 250mph, but can only do it for 1 second before the tires explode. A CPU that can hit 6ghz while pulling 400amps but can only do that for a few milliseconds before throttling itself is not particularly impressive.
- danbruc 4y ago
  Look at the original comment again, they address this very point. They forgot to say for how many microseconds can the chip sustain this speed. This is exactly what you are saying, they are asking how long can it run at 6 GHz before they have to throttle. Then they continue with the sentence I originally responded to. And 400 A ? Per nanosecond or what ? I see mainly two possibilities. The first one is that they made a typo and what they actually wanted to write is »And 400 A? For one nanosecond or what?« which would essentially be repeating the exact same question as in the sentence before, just in terms of current instead of clock frequency. But this is not what they wrote, they wrote »And 400 A? Per nanosecond or what?« which leads to the second possibility and the one I consider more likely. They were confused about the unit, the equivalent of responding to »The average US citizen consumes 10 kW of power.« with the question »Per day? Per month? Per year? In its lifetime?« which obviously makes no sense. That would be an appropriate response to the statement »The average US citizen consumes 89 MWh of energy.« Without the author telling us, we will never know for sure, but I find it more likely that they were confused about the unit than that they repeated the exact same questions twice and made a typo in the second one that just makes it look like they were confused about the unit.