Maybe all this is shocking if you're not already familiar with the way CPUs are specified and the way they have dynamically adjusted their speeds and power cons

Maybe all this is shocking if you're not already familiar with the way CPUs are specified and the way they have dynamically adjusted their speeds and power consumption for many years now. ARM systems do the same tricks for the same reasons. Here an ARM CPU is throttled back to keep total system consumption below a target TDP, meaning it's impossible to achieve the rated CPU+GPU performance simultaneously. They are "configuring them to throttle back in order to meet the advertised thermal figures." http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real-showdown/13 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real-showd... That just strikes me as good engineering. If the clocks were given simplistic hard upper limits to achieve the same ends (4W TDP limit in a system otherwise capable of consuming 8W), the result would be a less flexible, less powerful system. A waste, really. There is a real disparity between old-school absolute-maximum-TDP and realistic modern ultra-portable battery-powered use scenarios. Maybe Intel's SDP isn't the right answer, but it doesn't strike me as purely shady marketing malarkey either.