Methodology — RetroFlops

Contents

Metrics: what each number actually measures MIPS, DMIPS, FLOPS, SPEC results, TDP and whole-system power answer different questions. RetroFlops keeps them apart instead of folding them into a single figure of merit.

Confidence, absence and editorial status How evidence, numerical basis, absence and editorial review determine what a figure means and whether automation may use it.

Derived claims, formulas and rounding Every computed number shows its formula, its inputs, its rounding rule and its caveats. The pipeline recomputes it from scratch on every build.

Sources, tiers and locators What counts as evidence, how much of it a published figure needs, and how a reader re-checks a number without taking this project's word for it.

Why these pages exist

Hardware comparisons go wrong in a small number of repeatable ways: a floating-point rate quoted without its precision, a benchmark score compared across versions, a cooling-design figure read as power consumption, a missing value written as zero. Each page here names one of those failures and says what this project does instead.

None of it is advisory. A comparison that these rules forbid is refused by the pipeline rather than rendered with a warning, and a figure whose source does not meet the bar is not published at all.