Compute natively
Silicon · perf per joule ·
- If you want an operation done, the most energy-efficient hardware is the hardware that natively performs that operation.
- Emulating it with alternatives, whether a general-purpose instruction stream, a lookup table or a chain of smaller operations, spends energy on translation that does none of the work.
- Every layer between the operation and the physics carrying it out adds switching, movement and control overhead, and perf per joule falls with each one.