Back to Bits: Extending Shannon's communication performance framework to computing
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912525990232064 |
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| author | Hawkins, Max Vuduc, Richard |
| author_facet | Hawkins, Max Vuduc, Richard |
| contents | This work proposes a novel computing performance unit grounded in information theory. Modern computing systems are increasingly diverse, supporting low-precision formats, hardware specialization, and emerging paradigms such as analog, quantum, and reversible logic. Traditional metrics like floating-point operations (flops) no longer accurately capture this complexity. We frame computing as the transformation of information through a channel and define performance in terms of the mutual information between a system's inputs and outputs. This approach measures not just the quantity of data processed, but the amount of meaningful information encoded, manipulated, and retained through computation. Our framework provides a principled, implementation-agnostic foundation for evaluating performance. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_05621 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Back to Bits: Extending Shannon's communication performance framework to computing Hawkins, Max Vuduc, Richard Performance D.4.8; K.6.2 This work proposes a novel computing performance unit grounded in information theory. Modern computing systems are increasingly diverse, supporting low-precision formats, hardware specialization, and emerging paradigms such as analog, quantum, and reversible logic. Traditional metrics like floating-point operations (flops) no longer accurately capture this complexity. We frame computing as the transformation of information through a channel and define performance in terms of the mutual information between a system's inputs and outputs. This approach measures not just the quantity of data processed, but the amount of meaningful information encoded, manipulated, and retained through computation. Our framework provides a principled, implementation-agnostic foundation for evaluating performance. |
| title | Back to Bits: Extending Shannon's communication performance framework to computing |
| topic | Performance D.4.8; K.6.2 |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.05621 |