Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <meaning><meaning-in-context><slang><metaphors>
Title: What does "One CPU is going to 'smoke' another CPU" mean?
Question: I faced the following sentence:   You really can’t say a 4.1GHz FX-8350 is going to  smoke  a 3.5GHz Core i7-3770K because in a hell of a lot of workloads the 3.5GHz Core i7 is going to dominate.   I can guess that 'smoke' is similar to the word 'win', but is it right?What is the exact shade of meaning?  I appreciate getting the russian translation.

Answers:
sents: text: You have it right; "smoke" can be used to mean "win" (or maybe even, "win easily," or "win decisively").
text: When talking about lopsided contests, frequently-used slang verbs fall into a few different categories.
text: For example, there's the word beat , along with its synonyms (such as drub, thrash, whip, and trounce – all of these words can be found in headlines, articles, and recaps of sporting events , elections , and business rivalries ).
text: Another category would be metaphorical pressure from above, giving us words like stomp and crush .
text: Furthermore, when the contest involves blazing speed (such as races between sprinters or microprocessors), many of the verbs deal with fire, such as smoke, burn, or torch .
text: Here are a few examples from recent news articles: the next-generation Samsung Exynos 7420 chip, which is said to power these newest flagship phones, burns the competition with respect to 3D performance He [Jeff Gordon] torched the field with 13 wins, which nearly doubled the next-best driver
text: "This is going to be a great game going against a team like that," Beckham said shortly after he burned the Dolphins with a seven-catch, 166 yard, two-touchdown masterpiece
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/113/J.R.
score: 39
sents: text: To smoke someone originally meant (and still does mean) to shoot them to death with a gun .
text: The reference was to the smoke coming from the weapon's muzzle.
text: This colorful term has come to mean "defeat soundly, trounce".
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/10264/Tᴚoɯɐuo
score: 36
sents: text: When I hear this expression, I think of two possible metaphors: Two cars are drag racing on a dirt road.
text: Carl's Camaro is much faster than Mary's Miata.
text: The Camaro quickly gets ahead of the Miata.
text: Both cars "kick up" dust.
text: Mary's Miata is literally in a dust cloud that Carl's Camaro "kicked up".
text: The Miata is figuratively "eating" the Camaro's dust.
text: In other words, the Camaro "dusts" the Miata.
text: The dust metaphor can be stretched a bit to "smoke":
text: Either the Camaro is burning a little oil, or Carl smokes cigarettes, or Carl spins his tires (causing the tires to give off smoke).
text: In other words, Carl's car "smokes" Mary's car.
text: Two chips are racing to complete a task.
text: The i486 is much faster than the i286.
text: You could "overclock" the i286 to make it go faster, but the i286 might overheat.
text: If you overclocked the i286 enough to keep up, the i286 might literally burn up -- it would literally start to smoke.
text: Even if you did not try to destroy the i286, the huge difference in the test performance could be metaphorically described as "The i486 smoked the i286."
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/9100/Jasper
score: 17
sents: text: The New Oxford American Dictionary says: 3 [ with obj. ]
text: informal kill (someone) by shooting.
text: • defeat overwhelmingly in a fight or contest.
text: That's a pretty exact definition; I have nothing to add to it.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/27676/Wildcard
score: 16
sents: text: In plain English the meaning is as follows: "
text: A 4.1GHz FX-8350 is not necessarily going to make your computer run faster than a 3.5GHz Core i7-3770K, because in many real-life applications the 3.5GHz Core i7 is actually the faster processor."
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/26939/Mark Hubbard
score: 5
sents: text: Smoking could mean better benchmarks (what you get when you run programs like Prime95, Furmark etc.) or better real-life experience (better stability, better single-core performance, etc.).
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/27699/Thomas Shera
score: 2

Summary of the answers:
You are correct. "Smoke" can be used to mean "win" (or even, "win easily," or "win decisively").  This colorful term has come to mean "defeat soundly", or "trounce".
Smoking can mean to win or defeat, or even better benchmarks.