[clug] Modern laptops, nVidia, Optimus and Linux

[Andrew Janke]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 15:50, David Austin <david at d-austin.net> wrote:
> This all started me thinking.  There are approximately 1.2million
> nerves in the optic nerve.  I can't easily find bit rates for human
> nerves(!!).
> But lets assume an upper bound of 100bits/s (we certainly can't
> perceive monitor refresh rates above about 75Hz).  Then if
> we assume normal stereo scenes I guess that the information
> content for two eyes is only 25% more than for one eye.
>
> Result: 150Mbits/s.

Ah but that's where you'd be wrong. By the time the "data" has reached
the optic nerve a bunch of processing has already gone on in the
retina. Perhaps you'd be better to start with these numbers:

   # of rods a human eye: ~120 million    (B/W contrast perception)
   # of cones: ~5 million  (pretty colours)

There are also a bunch of other pathways, take a corneal reflex, it
happens faster than it would take for the signal to get to the brain and back
to the eyelid muscles. ie: there are other pathways out of the eye
beyond the optic nerve,
Add to this that you don't perceive what it is that makes you blink
(you just feel it hit your eyelid).

It of course even gets more messy when you add in knowledge that this
same reflex is triggered by loud noise...


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