[dlcarrier]

    It highlights that an idle loop in Arduino is energetically detrimental.

That's not particularly uncommon. Many compilers or OSes default to wait loops when there's nothing to do, and they can be pretty power hungry.

[mbanzi]

The arduino framework is optimised for ease of use. Battery powered devices were not the target back then when it was created. This benchmark should have used one of the many techniques that optimise for power consumption.