Computer manufacturers have sought to make computer chips ever smaller, since decreasing the size of a computer's cen...

kens on June 12, 2020

June 2012 SEC 2 Q10

What about the part about not decreasing the sophistication? Also, how do I negate statement A? Thanks

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shunhe on June 13, 2020

Hi @kenken,

Thanks for the question! Notice that the author is basically saying that if you can’t reduce the size of the chips without reducing the sophistication, then you can’t increase the speed of the computers. Well, (A) is important because if you could make computers faster without making their chips smaller, you might be able to find another way of making a computer significantly faster without making the chips smaller, and so you wouldn’t have to worry about doing it that way, which takes sophistication worries out of the question.

“Unless” statements are a bit tricky to negate, but you can negate both parts, and then replace “unless” with “even if.” So here, the opposite of “you can’t make computers faster without making their CPU chips smaller” is “you can make a computer faster, even if you don’t make its CPU chip smaller.” That’s the negation of the original sentence, and it makes sense in ordinary language.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.