Sure..

Not true. Shell does a lot of things doing that. In case of C/C++ it could be 'yes, it's true' but not for interpreter language. Especially for busybox which even doesn't precompile script, I think. It processes script line-by-line.

[QUOTE] A CPU is able to do a lot more complex instructions, with longer paths. Note the complete lack of cache, scheduling, swapping, memory access and whatnot from "while true". It is better suited to measuring idle consumption than full load.[/QUOTE}

Again, if you speak about "true load" you right. But if we speak about rough measurements of power consumption comparison of different frequency it is enough. And cache + scheduling are in business. (I hope swapping - not)