That's waaaay too broad a grouping. You're thinking of PC's, basically, in one form or another (or their modern replacement, mobile devices). Industrial automa

That's waaaay too broad a grouping. You're thinking of PC's, basically, in one form or another (or their modern replacement, mobile devices). Industrial automation and hard real-time embedded devices like those that control surfaces in Fly-By-Wire systems are out there and with those it's not a matter of "throughput" but a matter of timeliness. I did a major project with QNX about a decade ago where the maximum allowed latency between any device on the (fiber-optic) network being asked a question by the master controller and the reply - then the processing of the reply - was less than 1 millisecond, full stop. Come in late and most of the time the sky doesn't fall in. But on the occasions that it does, you potentially have a 4 meter wide ribbon of red-hot steel flying out of the stands at 50mph. Or you blow one of the transistors that controls the 10-20 megawatt DC motors in each stand. (These "transistors" were boxes about 7' tall, filled with oil, and cost northwards of $200k). Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be late.