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Equation 4 · Part 2 · AI Accelerator Architecture in Practice: An Advanced Technical Guide

subscript

UsustainedU_{\mathrm{sustained}}
subscript

What this part means

The lower label selects a particular version, component, or indexed member of the quantity. For example, x₀ and xₜ can be values at different positions.

Its job in the formula

A subscript distinguishes a version, component, step, or member of a quantity. It does not automatically mean multiplication.

The passage around this formula

where N is the device count, PdeviceP_{\mathrm{device}} is a single device’s measured (not advertised) throughput on the actual workload, UsustainedU_{\mathrm{sustained}} is the utilization fraction observed over a representative multi-hour or multi-day window rather than a benchmark’s best run, and A is availability — the fraction of time the fleet is actually up and assigned to the job rather than down for failure, repair, or checkpoint recovery. Treating A as 1 is the single most common capacity-planning error, and it is the one large-scale operators are most explicit about correcting for.

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Learn the underlying idea

A subscript is a label attached below a symbol. It often selects a time step, component, category, or member of a sequence.

Open the illustrated subscripts: which member of a family? guide →

Sources cited in the article section

These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.