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Equation 37 · Part 10 · The Real Economics of Shipping a Model to a Device

superscript

Qdevice∗=(Cdev+U)/(ccloud−cd)Q^{*}_{\mathrm{device}} = (C_{\mathrm{dev}} + U) / (c_{\mathrm{cloud}} - c_{d})
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.

The passage around this formula

The marginal-cost argument for on-device inference is not wrong; it is one term in a four-term equation, and the other three — variant-matrix engineering, distillation-versus-teacher economics, and update-distribution bandwidth — are each individually documented at real, checkable magnitudes in this article. Distillation itself is nearly always worth doing: disclosed training runs in the hundreds of dollars clear their own break-even point against even modest cloud query volumes almost immediately. Placing the result on a device is a separate, harder calculation, one that rises with every additional tier a release has to validate and every device already in the field that has to receive the…

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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 →

The article lists its research sources here.