Years ago, when trying to explain hyper threading to my brother, who doesn't have any specialized technical knowledge, he came up with the analogy that it's like 2-ply toilet paper. You don't quite have 24 distinct things, but you have 12 that are roughly twice as useful as the individual ones, although you can't really separate them and expect them to work right.

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nayuki 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Nah, it's easier than that. Putting two chefs in the same kitchen doesn't let you cook twice the amount of food in the same amount of time, because sometimes the two chefs need to use the same resource at the same time - e.g. sink, counter space, oven. But, the additional chef does improve the utilization of the kitchen equipment, leaving fewer things unused.

	▲	whizzter 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe simplify more to make the concept of shared resource explicit. 2 chefs with one stove. As long as they're doing other things than frying it's ok and speeding things up but once they both need the stove you're down to 1 working and 1 waiting.

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BobbyTables2 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s perfect!

Especially when it come to those advertisements “6 large rolls == 18 normal rolls”.

Sure it might be thicker but nobody wipes their butt with 1/3 a square…

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skeezyboy 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> he came up with the analogy that it's like 2-ply toilet paper.

as in youd only use it to wipe excrement from around your sphincter