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Under "Koomey's law," it's efficiency, not power, that doubles every year and a half.
Researchers have, for the first time, shown that the energy efficiency of computers doubles roughly every 18 months.
The conclusion, backed up by six decades of data, mirrors Moore's law, the observation from Intel founder Gordon Moore that computer processing power doubles about every 18 months. But the power-consumption trend might have even greater relevance than Moore's law as battery-powered devices—phones, tablets, and sensors—proliferate.
"The idea is that at a fixed computing load, the amount of battery you need will fall by a factor of two every year and a half," says Jonathan Koomey, consulting professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and lead author of the study. More mobile computing and sensing applications become possible, Koomey says, as energy efficiency continues its steady improvement.
The research, conducted in collaboration with Intel and Microsoft, examined peak power consumption of electronic computing devices since the construction of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) in 1956. The first general purpose computer, the ENIAC was used to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army, and it could perform a few hundred calculations per second. It used vacuum tubes rather than transistors, took up 1,800 square feet, and consumed 150 kilowatts of power.
Even before the advent of discrete transistors, Koomey says, energy efficiency doubled every 18 months. "This is a fundamental characteristic of information technology that uses electrons for switching," he says. "It's not just a function of the components on a chip."
The sort of engineering considerations that go into improving computer performance—reducing component size, capacitance, and the communication time between them, among other things—also improves energy efficiency, Koomey says. The new research, coauthored by Stephen Berard of Microsoft, Marla Sanchez, at Carnegie Mellon University, and Henry Wong of Intel, was published in the July-September issue of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.
chrisk826
1 Comment
This is nothing new, Kurzweil's law of Accelerating Returns has been stating this for years, the expontial growth of all/most information technoliges can be tracked in this fashion, give the man a mention when you're stating his theroy. This Koomey guy is riding some coat tails here.
thor.russell
2 Comments
I reckon!
Are they going to name laws in exponentially increasing genome sequencing too? How about the doubling in solar that has been going on for years also pointed out by Kurzweil. Can that be named after me?
sweerek
23 Comments
rocket7777
67 Comments
not technology that made moorse law self fulfilling prophesy.
It is sort of unspoken illegal monopolistic collusion that intentionally slow down progress to maximize profit. Competition made graphics boards progress much much faster.
Irony is microsoft also illegally cooperate by conspire to slow down computer every 3 years or so to get people that are tired of slowdown to upgrade computer.
If people want to see efficiency, try Puppy Linux. For 20% of CD space (less than 140MB), you get operating system, utility, office, browser etc.
Of course google android is linus with gui/api and apps are small.
bobfope
2 Comments
The ENIAC may have been the first general-purpose computer, but it was certainly constructed before 1956 for in that year there were quite a few general-purpose computers being marketed, including the one I was involved with, the Bendix G-15.
Small flying robots inspired by birds and bugs may do tasks like search and rescue more efficiently.
National Instruments has gathered customer information and data regarding some of the cost differences between building a custom solution versus using NI off-the-shelf tools. Using this data, we built the Graphical System Design ‘Build vs. Buy’ Calculator. The calculator can help show the financial differences between building a custom solution versus buying an off-the-shelf system. This paper discusses the benefits and drawbacks of both a traditional custom design approach and off-the-shelf embedded tools.
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S0ma
20 Comments
uh oh
[EARLY WARNING SYSTEM]
in the distance i hear the grumbling of a troll.
will it bear the mere mentioning of 'quantum computers'?
RUN FOR IT!
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