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Comment by tintin | Hacker News Reader

The screen resolution he mentions is 0.1% of a 1024x768 resolution. So lets say we need 1000MHz to render 1024x768. Then I think modern software is doing alright. Because today we calculate more color bits, keep track of all the input devices, output 'real audio', keep the device online and so on.

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320x256 is 10% of 1024x768 in terms of raw pixels, not considering bit depth. But bit depth and raw pixels shouldn't matter here, the GPU takes care of mucking about with those and the GPU in the iPad is amazingly fast for its power consumption.

I think the point is that the iPad is sluggish and it shouldn't be. 30 years ago people knew how to make something fast reacting with way less hardware behind it, somehow we've lost that and added complexity that doesn't really seem visible to the user.

>think the point is that the iPad is sluggish and it shouldn't be The OP is arguing the opposite-- the responsiveness of the iPad demonstrates that we can have responsive systems even with all of today's luxuries

320x240/(1024*768)=0.10416666 which is about 10%. So we got ten times more pixel (and another factor 4-8 for more colors). Compared to a thousend times more cycles (and big factor for pipelining, dedicated graphic hardware, etc.). So, I think Op has got a point...

(320. * 256)/(1024 * 768) = 0.104 = 10.4%

Whoops I got my calculation wrong. It should be 10% indeed. So now I wonder why a GPU is needed...

Well, they're all forgetting a factor of 8 bits per pixel...

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