I was with you right up to the last statement, but I don't know where you got that idea. I'd phrase it as FLOPS does not measure scientific value.P5-133XL wrote:PPD's do not accurately the measure of scientific work/value.
Suppose I replace 10 machines with a single machine and both produce the same total flops. The 10 machines were producing K WUs per week and maybe each one met the Preferred deadline of, let's say, 7 days. The new machine will complete maybe K WUs per week, but each one is completed in 0.7 days. The total flops completed doesn't change, but the speed at which each WU is completed is 10x faster. In pure baseline points, the PPD is the same, but in QRB terms, the PPD is much higher.
If we were working on a project where every WU could be processed in parallel, then both scenarios complete K WUs in a week -- equal scientific value. FAH has many WUs which must be processed serially, making time an important measurement, hence the QRB formula awards scientific value to speed.
If all K WUs happened to be part of the same trajectory, it would take 10 weeks for the first 10 computers to complete the work because 9 machines wouldn't have a WU to work on, whereas the faster machine can process them one after another and be done in a week.