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Raptor Engineering released this infographic (below) comparing POWER8 to other processor architectures. (source, context)

In the context of machine architectures, what does "efficiency" refer to?

High level comparison of machine architectures

lofidevops
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  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it can only be answered by the creator of the image, Raptor Engineering. Besides, it's not specifically about programming so may be better off on a sister site. – Wai Ha Lee Mar 17 '16 at 07:44
  • Efficiency could be *any* number of things. Thermal efficiency, transfer efficiency, etc. – Wai Ha Lee Mar 17 '16 at 07:45
  • @WaiHaLee I was hoping someone more familiar with CPUs would be able to infer something from the context (see links) - but maybe it is too vague and/or specific - is there a hardware stack? – lofidevops Mar 17 '16 at 07:47
  • Not sure if there's a hardware stack, but there is [Super User](http://superuser.com/about) which deals with "Questions about general computing hardware and software". Maybe check it's on-topic there before asking though. – Wai Ha Lee Mar 17 '16 at 07:49
  • Probably 1/energy per computation. (i.e. performance / power). They show ARM as having a perfect score for it. – Peter Cordes Mar 17 '16 at 13:40

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Response from Raptor (emphasis added):

That metric refers to power efficiency and scalability; specifically as [I|F]LOPS are reduced how well the chip's power consumption also scales down. x86 and ARM are the clear winners here due to ARM's relatively simplistic design and Intel's aggressive lowering of process node size.

lofidevops
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