Equation 11 · Part 2 · Comparing the Main Approaches to AI Inference Economics
superscript
superscript
What this part means
A raised number can be a power. When it is a label or bound, it selects a case or the upper limit of a sum; the formula’s structure distinguishes these uses.
Its job in the formula
A raised mark can be a power or an index. Its position and the surrounding notation determine which.
Full expression→superscript→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
Below the break-even utilization , paying on demand only for the hours actually used is cheaper than holding a reservation that sits partly idle; above it, the reservation wins. What no published rate card can supply is u itself — a property of the buyer’s own traffic, not of any vendor’s pricing page — which is exactly why “is reserved capacity worth it” has no answer that holds across buyers, only a formula that turns a buyer’s own utilization forecast into one.
Learn the underlying idea
An exponent tells how a base is used in multiplication. In x³, x is the base and 3 is the exponent: x³ = x × x × x.
Open the illustrated exponents: repeated multiplication and powers guide →
Sources cited in the article section
- [1] EC2 On-Demand Instance Pricing ↗
- [4] Compute Savings Plans Pricing ↗
- [7] Provisioned Throughput for Foundry Models ↗
- [8] Pricing ↗
- [6] GPU Cloud Pricing ↗
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.