A figure of merit (FOM) is a performance metric that characterizes the performance of a device, system, or method, relative to its alternatives.
Examples Absolute alcohol content per currency unit in an alcoholic beverage Accuracy of a rifle Audio amplifier figures of merit such as gain or efficiency Battery life of a laptop computerDecoding Battery Life For Laptops New York Times, June 25, 2009 Calories per serving Clock rate of a CPU is often given as a figure of merit, but is of limited use in comparing between different architectures. FLOPS may be a better figure, though these too are not completely representative of the performance of a CPU. Contrast ratio of an LCD Frequency response of a speaker Fill factor of a solar cell Resolution of the image sensor in a digital camera Measure of the detection performance of a sonar system, defined as the propagation loss for which a 50% detection probability is achieved Noise figure of a radio receiver The thermoelectric figure of merit, zT, a material constant proportional to the efficiency of a thermoelectric couple made with the material The figure of merit of digital-to-analog converter, calculated as (power dissipation)/(2ENOB × effective bandwidth) [J/Hz] Luminous efficacy of lighting Profit of a company Residual noise remaining after compensation in an aeromagnetic survey Heat absorption and transfer quality for a solar cooker Performance of transparent conducting thin-film materials, such as FTO, calculated as (transparency)10/(surface resistivity)
Computational benchmarks are synthetic figures of merit that summarize the speed of algorithms or computers in performing various typical tasks.
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