# Seventeen or Bust

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## Mathematics Subject Classification

### how is a Hertz energy?

Hertz are a measure of frequence which you could convert into energy measure if you know the amplitude of the wave I suppose, but I guess I don't understand how one can measure "tera Hertz of energy." Could you explain?

### Re: how is a Hertz energy?

Hi Algeboy,
You are right. Hertz is frequency non energy. I guess that primefan talks about the alternating current necessary to put into operation those computers. Electric companies measure the energy in Kw-hr.

### Re: how is a Hertz energy?

The current is produced generally to 60Hz.

### Re: how is a Hertz energy?

I was careless and was ensnared by one of those terminology traps I ought to know better about. The Project Stats page of the Seventeen or Bust project says "Equivalent power (est.)" and gives "45.97 THz" for the "Overall" column. A lot of the units used in those stats are unfamiliar to me (like cEMs/sec and P90-yrs), but I thought I knew what I was talking about when I saw the THz, but I was wrong.

### Re: how is a Hertz energy?

Hi primefan,
I think that 45.97THz it could be the summatory of frecuencies of all CPU taking part in the Project, as it is measured in multi-processor servers.

### Re: how is a Hertz energy?

That would make sense. That way one could avoid the usual problem of listing "14 hours on a Sparc, 27 days on a Pentium III..." which doesn't really give you a sense of how much overall computing was done.

I see such lists in computer algebra results some times and it makes me laugh because I know these data will be relevent only for about a year. Using a standardized measure such as sum of the cycles seems to be something you could use as a long term bench mark. You could run the same problem on faster machines which might get the answer quicker in real time because they can fit more cycles in a second, but to determine if you have an actual computational improvement you ought to be able to do it in fewer over all computing cycles, thus a lower Hz measure rather than a lower times measure. This way it is not about fast/slow computers but rather efficient programs.

So using Hertz in this way is somewhat like the concept of polynomial time measurements. These are measures of the number of steps made in the program and are not directly a measure of energy usage as that varries from computer to computer.

Thanks perucho.

### Re: how is a Hertz energy?

That sounds like a plausible explanation to me, too. So I will change the entry accordingly.