"Anthony W. Youngman" <thewolery@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:UGXSKIAGbtk$EwW3@thewolery.demon.co.uk...
>
> As soon as a requirement for a database specifies extraction of the
> maximum power from the box,
I don't for a second believe that this is your only requirement,
or that this is even an actual requirement. If it really is an
actual requirement, then I assume you're writing all of your
code in hand-tuned assembly language, and that the document
you consult most regularly when writing code is the CPU's
instruction timing table.
Another commodity box costs $1000, which is about the
same as the cost to a company of a day's programmer time.
What *really* matters is getting software delivered in a timely
fashion, that is as correct as possible, and that will operate
reliably over time and not cause data corruption.
Marshall