Let's be real, if a roofer was asked anything comparable to a programming question it would be to provide an accurate approximation of the total number of roofing contracts completed globally within the last half-minute on the back of a coffee-stained napkin.

But that's not what's being asked by OP. Their question is rather simple, and software engineer should be able to answer it on autopilot, without even engaging her brain. As a hiring manager I would end the interview right there and then after the failure to answer something like this.

As an interviewee, I would roll my eyes at the ignorance of the interviewer.

This is the sort of question that reveals the ignorance of the person asking it. The correct answer is "yes". What is 'modern'? There are very modern embedded CPUs that operate in the low MHz range. How much power is being provided? A 'modern' CPU can be underclocked to ridiculous levels for power savings. What's an operation? Are we talking MOV AX, 1 or are we talking hashing a string?

It's the kind of question a dumb person asks thinking they're being quite clever.

And you are one of the types of person the question is meant to weed out - people so threatened by a simple question they get defensive and hostile.

And thanks for calling me dumb!

Thanks for projecting 'threatened' onto me!

You're the type of interviewer I would weed out, so by all means keep asking the question.

And low Mhz range is in the millions, which they said they would accept as an answer with that explanation.

Clock rate != operations. It's like you didn't bother to read what I wrote.

Closely enough related to number of basic operations though I'd say. I'll agree with you if it really just is a multiple choice question without context, but the initial poster did not present it that way, but said that explanation/discussion matters. And then your objections are a good starting point for that.

The worst thing you realistically can do to stall your CPU is miss cache every time you read data from RAM. If you do this for every instruction (which would be quite a feat in itself), you divide your instruction throughput by about 200. But even then, and even on the shittiest modern CPU you'll be retiring millions of instructions per second.

The MSP430, released in 2010, can be clocked down to 32kHz. That's pretty much the state of the art in modern, low-power devices.

And if you know that, I'm pretty sure you'd pass that interview.