About

Hardware is a specific implementation of a computer architecture by following:

on a physical level by choosing adequate device and bus.

A line of processors may implement the same instruction set architecture and use nearly identical organizations but differs in hardware implementation. See example

Example

Energy vs Performance

The Core i7 family provides two hardware model:

  • one for desktop computers that is more powerful but consumes more energy,
  • one for laptops that is less performant but more energy efficient